Reality Bites
by dti
Summary: Team 7 gets a lesson in the mortality of their jinchuuriki. Sometimes, there were consequences for hosting a thing like Kyuubi. [NOT a deathfic. Naruto x Team7 friendship, no pairings]
1. Part One

**Reality Bites**

Team 7 gets a lesson in the mortality of their jinchuuriki. All friendship/no pairings. Purely team 7 loving the hell right out of poor, tortured Naruto.

 **A/N:** Only three things you need to know for this fic: it's set in some sort of perfect world where Sasuke chooses not to defect the village, they're still twelve, and it's common knowledge among Sakura and Sasuke that Naruto is the Kyuubi jinchuuriki.

 **Part One**

"I'm not gonna train today. I'm sick," Naruto admitted tiredly; his team looked to him in surprise. He looked like actual hell – or at least straight from it. "So – see ya."

Before any of them could interject something in response, the clone before them disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving a short moment of a stunned silence in its wake.

If Naruto was known as any one thing aside from the Kyuubi jinchuuriki, it was tough as balls and just about indestructible – at least it seemed that way after hours of trying to knock him out during any given training session.

No matter how many times Naruto ate dirt, he always seemed to get up for more.

So none of them second-guessed that he wasn't feeling well; _everyone_ got sick once and a while and Naruto would be just about the last person to fake it. If anything, they were surprised he even considered staying home.

Either way, the rest of team seven arrived at the general consensus – and with Sasuke's inspired dictation – that their littlest counterpart was too much of an idiot to take care of himself.

So they made their way in the direction of Naruto's neighborhood and when they arrived at Naruto's apartment a quarter of an hour later, he must have been asleep; both Kakashi and Sakura tried softly knocking before Sasuke went for the doorbell to ring it several times in a row.

After no response, Sasuke laid his thumb into the bell and rode it until Naruto answered the door, looking half-asleep and wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, a wrinkled t-shirt, and an unamused look directed tightly at Sasuke.

" _What?_ " he snapped, voice heavy with sleep. "I said I was sick."

"Yeah, as if we couldn't tell from the shape of that clone you sent," Sasuke mentioned callously.

"We're here to check on you," Kakashi explained; the news didn't sit well with Naruto who tried to swing the door shut in response – but Kakashi stuck his foot out to stop it, pushing it open and letting himself in instead.

"I'm sure I'll be fine by tomorrow."

"Doubt it," Sakura guessed casually while she and Sasuke followed Kakashi inside. "If whatever you've got kept you home from training, I'm surprised it didn't kill you."

"Why?" Naruto asked cynically while he flopped back onto his mattress, rolling to face the wall. "Cuz I'm too stupid to know what to do when I'm sick?"

There was a bowl next to his pillow, and he grabbed it quickly to catch the vomit he'd been fighting down; Kakashi watched his student with a sympathetic furrow at his brow.

"Yeah, we all figured you were too stupid to know even that," Sasuke confirmed easily; Naruto felt agitated but too spent from throwing up to bother showing it.

"Just – _shut up_ , Sasuke," he breathed tiredly in response.

"Have you kept anything down?" Kakashi asked, ignoring his students' argument.

" _Yeah_ ," Naruto bit back caustically, "I've been _so_ hungry and eating a ton."

"I mostly meant water," Kakashi corrected flatly, unamused by Naruto's quip; it was uncharacteristic. Kakashi got attitude like that from Sasuke – he _expected_ it from Sasuke, but not as regularly from Naruto.

Kakashi placed a firm hand on Naruto's hot and clammy forehead and felt his heart race a little at the heat assaulting his palm; his young student's bad mood suddenly made a whole lot more sense.

"Do you have a thermometer, Naruto?" Kakashi asked neutrally, earning an equally as neutral "no" in response. "How 'bout anything to treat a fever?"

The boy responded with an unsure shrug which said no as clearly as if he'd said it out loud.

"I'm tired," Naruto admitted slowly; he didn't want to appear ungrateful that they'd come by to check on him, but he felt far more exhausted than afraid of sounding rude. "Can you guys just…leave?"

"Sasuke and Sakura are leaving," Kakashi reassured looking over at the pair and nodding for them to head for the door. "Sasuke, can you wait a minute for me outside?"

Sasuke shrugged indifferently before turning to head out, Sakura close behind after offering a gentle "Feel better soon, Naruto." Naruto would probably never say it, but Kakashi could tell he felt better without an audience of his peers.

Kakashi followed them out to address Sasuke once they were in the hallway. "I want you to grab some things from the pharmacy for me," he explained while he pulled out his wallet and handed over several bills to his student.

"Fine," Sasuke agreed while he pocketed the cash. "What do you want?"

"Just bring me a thermometer and some Tylenol."

"Ok."

"And if you can find something to drink with electrolytes in it, bring that too."

"Anything else?"

"Not that I can think of," Kakashi determined slowly. "If I think of anything else, I'll just send you out again once you get back."

Sasuke responded with a dry, stilted laugh that spoke of how unentertained he felt as he headed down the hall for the stairwell while Kakashi turned back for the apartment door to check on the occupant inside.

By the time he returned, Naruto was either asleep, or attempting to get there, and Kakashi didn't bother waking him up until Sasuke returned with everything he'd asked for a quarter of an hour later.

"Need any help?" Sasuke asked plainly; he didn't want to sound assertive, but it not like he had anything better to do – training with Naruto absorbed a good majority of his time. He could train on his own, but somehow, today it seemed like a waste.

"Thanks for the offer," Kakashi acknowledged with knowing, smiling eyes, "but you can head home for the day."

Without arguing, Sasuke nodded, heading for the door to leave Kakashi alone with Naruto who was, by now, so deeply asleep he hadn't even been bothered by their conversation – something that would have probably woken him up any other given day.

"Naruto," Kakashi tried quietly while he gently nudged at his student, "wake up for just a minute."

Naruto blinked tiredly back at him in acknowledgement. "I thought you left."

"I'm going to take your temperature so open up," Kakashi prompted, waving the thermometer in his hand at Naruto who complied by reaching out to grab the thermometer from Kakashi to stick it in his mouth himself.

He didn't need Kakashi to do everything for him because he wasn't a child.

"Keep that in for three minutes," Kakashi reminded while he returned to the kitchen where he'd left the Tylenol and the blue colored sports drink that Sasuke managed to find.

Kakashi popped off the lid of the drink and the smell of artificial sweetener assaulted him at once, so he looked for a cup among the half empty cabinets and filled it with a mixture of water and the blue drink to cut down on the flavor.

He checked the face of his watch to confirm it'd been at least three minutes before pulling the thermometer from Naruto's unsuspecting mouth to read it.

"Here, Naruto. Take these," Kakashi instructed, dropping a pair of capsules into the palm of Naruto's hand and setting the cup down on the side table, "and drink as much of that as you can without making yourself sick," he finished while he examined the reading on the thermometer.

Kakashi expected a fight, but Naruto tossed back the pills and drank half a cup before tossing himself back into the pillows and blankets atop his bed. "Can I go to sleep now?"

"Sure, Naruto, go to bed," Kakashi accepted, turning the thermometer in the light to make sure he read it right. Naruto had a fever–no doubt–but at the moment, it didn't appear to be unmanageable. "I'll come see how you're feeling later today, ok?"

Naruto hummed in acknowledgement but didn't offer any other response.

"And take two more of these at noon, ok?"

"Whatever."

"I'm serious Naruto," Kakashi pressed on firmly while he shook free a second set of pills and placed them on his bedside table. "If you can't agree to that, I'll be back at noon to supervise."

"Obviously I'm gonna do it."

"Well, it wasn't obvious."

"Sorry," Naruto mumbled back stiffly. "I don't feel good."

"I know," Kakashi reassured while he capped the thermometer and set it on the table beside the cup of watered down sports drink. "Get some rest, try to stay hydrated, and I'll be back to check on you later."

Naruto raised a tired hand in acknowledgement before Kakashi turned to leave, heading out the front door and locking it behind himself.

Naruto would be ok – he was feverish and nauseas, but Kakashi suspected it was nothing more than the flu or food poisoning – it would probably be a few days, but Naruto would be ok. Team seven would make sure of that.

 **A/N:** Yep, another generic fanficion about so-n-so being sick with something. All I can promise is that it _isn't_ the flu or food poisoning. Stay tuned if you please :]


	2. Part Two

**Reality Bites**

 **Part Two**

The next time Naruto woke, it was to the tapping of Kakashi's knuckles on the window his bed sat beneath.

"It's one in the afternoon," Kakashi's voice notified as it floated through the glass, "and I noticed you haven't touched that Tylenol you said you'd take."

Naruto sat up to unlatch the window before sliding it open.

"I didn't realize it was already afternoon," Naruto admitted tiredly. "I've just been sleeping – I swear."

"I believe you," Kakashi reassured.

Naruto reached for the pair of pills and the glass resting beside them.

"Are you feeling hungry at all?" Kakashi asked; Naruto tossed back the medicine, features pinched in aversion.

"No," he answered while he set the glass down heavily to cover his mouth with the back of his hand in an attempt to fight the nausea clawing at his stomach. "I forgot that was flavored."

Kakashi laughed sympathetically. "It might taste like crap to you right now, but you should drink as much of it as you can. It'll help more than water."

"It doesn't taste bad," Naruto assured quickly. "I just wasn't expecting it."

"Your teammates and I are coming this evening to make dinner."

" _What?_ " Naruto complained unhappily, dragging the word out in grievance. " _Both_ of them?"

"Yes, Sasuke's coming, too," Kakashi answered, picking up on Naruto's apathetic implication.

"He's not too busy sulking around somewhere, too good for everyone?"

"He said he could push it back a few hours," Kakashi shot back with smiling eyes and a pat at Naruto's shoulder.

Naruto responded with an aggravated breath through his lips, his cross gaze going to the ceiling in distaste.

"He probably poisoned me in the first place," Naruto accused, "and now he wants to come finish the job."

"No one's poisoned you," Kakashi reassured while he reached through the open window with a tupperware of dry oats and another filled with what looked like fruit and yogurt. "Sakura sent this," Kakashi mentioned while he pulled off the note stuck to one of the lids. "She says 'the oatmeal can help boost your immune system, the yogurt is for protein and vitamins, and the blueberries contain anthocyanins which help fight viruses and bacteria – so eat all of it or else'."

Kakashi stuck the note back onto the lid he'd removed it from and Naruto looked down at it fondly.

"She made this for me?"

"She did," Kakashi assured contentedly; it was endearing to see Naruto so deeply moved by such a small favor from his pink-haired teammate. "Eat as much as you can, or put the yogurt in the fridge if you're not hungry."

"Ok."

"I'll be back later tonight with your teammates," Kakashi repeated while Naruto inspected the food in his lap.

"Yeah don't remind me," Naruto mumbled; Kakashi ducked out of the window to exit off the balcony with one last wave goodbye.

Naruto scooted to the edge of his mattress to get out of bed before making his way toward the kitchen to boil water for the oatmeal; he was touched by Sakura's gesture and felt better than this morning after sleeping off his nausea. He wasn't particularly hungry, but he was willing to give it a shot.

By the time he was finished and the dishes were drying next to the sink, he was feeling full and tired so he snuck back under the covers to slip into a deep sleep that carried him right into the evening.

Kakashi arrived for dinner with his teammates in tow like he'd promised and Naruto felt like he'd been summoned from the dead when he woke later to the sound of the doorbell.

"Naruto, did you eat everything I sent over this afternoon?" Sakura investigated accusingly while the three of them piled into his small studio apartment.

"Yeah, thanks, Sakura-chan," Naruto acknowledged gratefully. "It was great. Your stuff is on the counter."

Naruto watched while they set grocery bags on the table before sorting through them to organize their ingredients.

"Do you guys need any help?" Naruto asked unsurely.

"Thanks, but no thanks. We're all eating," Kakashi clarified simply, "and _we_ don't want whatever _you_ have. Why don't you go lay down until we're done?"

Naruto stuck his tongue out in response because he didn't _love_ the answer but he understood the logic; he sat at the edge of his futon instead of lying down – sleeping with visitors present seemed weird even if he was no expert in hosting company.

Naruto watched while the three of them got to work; they seemed to have no problem at all looking through his kitchen to locate any cooking equipment they needed.

"Here, Naruto," Sakura began while she approached him where he sat, "drink this."

"What is it?" Naruto asked while she handed over the steaming mug.

"Black tea," she answered while Naruto blew at the hot liquid inside the cup in an attempt to cool it. "We're making a ginger, garlic soup – ginger should help with your nausea and garlic can help you get better more quickly, so when it's ready, eat a lot, ok?"

Naruto nodded meekly, hiding behind his mug to take a timid sip at the tea inside.

"I have to go boil noodles," Sakura explained apologetically, "so sit tight and drink that tea."

With that, she set off to dump several cups of raw noodles into a boiling pot of water while Naruto sipped determinedly at the mug in his hands; tea wasn't really his favorite thing in the world. To him, it tasted bland – but he hated disappointing Sakura more than he hated tea, so he resolved himself to finishing it all before she came back.

"Food's almost ready," Sakura notified when she returned to check on him.

"Okay."

"Did you drink that tea, already?" Sakura inquired with a rapt glance inside his cup; she plucked the empty mug from his hands to replace it with a glass of water and stuck a pair of capsules out expectantly until Naruto put a hand out to catch them. "Take those and then come sit down."

Naruto tossed back the medicine quickly and got up to head to the table where his one, single chair sat before a steaming bowl of soup and he wondered, with a glance around, where everyone else would sit.

Kakashi looked busy in the kitchen cleaning up their mess while Sakura and Sasuke found a section of counter to lean against while eating, so he sat quietly, sipping at the broth in the bowl before him and feeling bad for not having more seating available – not that he'd ever needed it before or would ever need it again.

Sasuke and Sakura seemed to finish quickly, leaving Naruto as the only one with any food left, and Kakashi hovered behind him to check on how he was doing.

"C'mon, Naruto, you're not done already, are you?" Kakashi criticized when he noticed how little his young student ended up eating.

"I'm still working on it," Naruto offered elusively, spinning his spoon through the broth like he was looking for the right bite.

"Should I feed it to you?" the silver haired man joked, earning an entertained laugh out of Naruto as he took another bite. "I could make it an airplane or a train if that'll help." Naruto laughed a little harder.

" _Stop_ ," Naruto bid while he stifled a laugh, "I'm trying to eat."

"Really? Because it looks more like you're just pushing your soup around."

Naruto took another bite to shut him up, but even all the determination he had in his small body wasn't enough to create hunger where there wasn't any, and he swallowed his last bite thickly, willing it to stay down.

" _Ooh_ , I know that look," Kakashi mentioned apologetically while he took the bowl from before Naruto who looked visibly sick to his stomach. "Sorry for pushing it."

"I'm fine," he claimed stiffly.

He spent the next several minutes trying to prove it, sitting still and concentrating on _not_ vomiting while the trio in the kitchen cleaned whatever mess remained.

Sasuke was scrubbing dishes when the handle of the pot he washed broke off, the pot it was attached to slipping out of his grip and plunging back into the sink of water.

" _Naruto_ ," the brunette huffed in frustration, "all your stuff is crap."

"Screw you!"

" _Sasuke_ ," Kakashi interjected unhappily, "stop trying to always trying to light a fire. And Naruto," he pressed on, "stop taking the bait – _every_ – _time_."

"Screw Sasuke and _screw that!_ "

Sasuke looked entertained with Naruto's response, but Kakashi seemed plain tired.

"Here –" the silver-haired man sighed while he handed over a plastic bag of trash to Sasuke, "– take the garbage out. And Naruto, go wash your face or something and cool down."

"I'm not a little kid – I don't need to wash my face to cool off."

"Yeah, it'd take Konoha's entire water reserve for that," Sasuke interjected unhelpfully.

Naruto responded with a frustrated noise and Kakashi pushed Sasuke closer to the door in an attempt to ease the tension growing between the two of them, like the distance might help.

"Get going."

"Where's the dumpster for your apartment, idiot?"

"Same place all Konoha's trash goes, Sasuke. Up your –"

"Enough!" Kakashi interjected quickly. "Just go find it, Sasuke. It's a giant cube of garbage – track it down by scent if you have to."

Sasuke left the apartment without another word, flashing a smug grin at Naruto who fumed where he sat at the kitchen table, furious with his dark haired teammate who _always_ seemed hell-bent on harassing him – even when he needed it the very least.

"Naruto – just ignore him," Kakashi advised patiently. "When will you realize that he'll stop pressing your buttons when you stop giving him a reason to?"

"I can't sometimes. He's such an asshole," Naruto argued, like it explained everything. "And I'm – in a bad mood," he admitted mildly.

"You don't feel good," Kakashi reassured. "It's ok to be in a bad mood."

"Whatever," Naruto mumbled in response, feeling embarrassed with being mollycoddled because he was sick; his stomach churned with disquiet – or maybe it was just his nausea.

He tried quietly to still his uneasy stomach, but the fight already seemed futile to him; he could already feel himself breaking out in a cold, uncomfortable sweat.

"Feeling ok?" Kakashi asked cautiously.

Naruto responded by bolting for the bathroom, reaching the toilet in time to empty everything he'd consumed into the porcelain bowl before him.

"There goes his dinner," Sakura sighed, worried over his imminent dehydration should he continue struggling to keep anything down. "And probably the medicine he took too."

Kakashi nodded in acknowledgement while he made his way toward the bathroom door. "Naruto?" he began while he knocked softly at the door, "can I get you anything?"

"Can you guys just go away?" Naruto requested weakly in return, his voice barely making it through the door. "It's bad enough without Sasuke mocking me."

Sakura looked like she felt bad, as if she were somehow responsible for Sasuke's insensitivity.

"Sakura," Kakashi began, addressing the pink haired kunoichi quietly, "when Sasuke comes back, why don't the two of you head home? I'll finish up here."

"Okay, sensei," she agreed meekly; the medic in her wanted to stay and help, but she understood Naruto's desire for privacy, and she respected him enough to honor it.

She waited outside the apartment door in the hallway until Sasuke came back and she explained that they were free to go.

"So that idiot's kicking us out, hm?" Sasuke assumed; Sakura looked like she struggled to gather the courage to say something and Sasuke crossed his arms, waiting for her to do it.

"Sasuke-kun, I really like you, so this is hard for me to say –"

"Just spit it out," Sasuke interrupted abrasively; several months ago, his callous behavior might have stung Sakura, but she'd grown resilient to it over time.

"Stop being such a jerk to Naruto. He's really sick and you're not being a good teammate."

Sasuke didn't really care what Sakura thought of him – but he did care that he was being a shitty teammate to Naruto, so even coming from Sakura, the truth sounded harsh; most especially because he knew she was right.

"Whatever," he responded flatly, turning away from her to head home.

Outwardly, it might have appeared that what Sakura said meant nothing to Sasuke, but the truth was that it dug deep into the back of his mind and stuck with him all evening, making it difficult to find sleep later that night.

He felt so guilty over it that the first thing he did that next morning was make his way back to Naruto's apartment to check in on him; but he made a point to go early in the morning, when he knew Naruto was likely to be asleep.

He perched himself on the ledge outside the window quietly, glancing inside to find Naruto's futon empty and his teammate standing at the kitchen counter with his back to the window. He watched while Naruto leaned heavily against the counter, waiting for the faucet to fill his cup with water.

Sasuke slid the window open and Naruto turned swiftly toward him at the noise, looking unimpressed to discover it was Sasuke of all people breaking into his apartment.

"What do you want?"

"Shouldn't you be resting?" Sasuke criticized, ignoring Naruto's question altogether.

"I am," the blonde claimed tiredly, flipping the faucet off and turning with his half-full glass. "I just needed water."

"Been keeping any of it down?"

"What d'you care?" Naruto mumbled unhappily, slurring many of the heavier consonants together.

"Naruto?" Sasuke began more seriously when the blonde sat down in the chair before the kitchen table, setting the cup in his hand heavily onto the table's surface. "You ok?"

"I'm fine," Naruto snapped, his elbows resting on the table and his head in his hands.

Sasuke watched Naruto struggle to cling to consciousness and the brunette was just quick enough to both move the glass of water out of the way and catch Naruto's dead weight before it fell out of the chair to the hard, unforgiving kitchen floor.

He had a cold, sinking feeling that Naruto was _not_ fine – not even close.

 **A/N:** Can you guess what will be behind Naruto's illness? I bet you can't, yet :P


	3. Part Three

**Reality Bites**

 **Part Three**

"You dumb, stupid idiot," Sasuke accused under his breath while he draped one of Naruto's limp arms around his shoulder to pick him up out of the chair and drag him across the room toward his futon; but he soon felt his aggravation shift to deep unease at the heat coming off his teammate – just being next to Naruto while he carried his limp body across the kitchen was enough to make Sasuke feel clammy with sweat.

But Naruto's skin was as dry as it was hot, and Sasuke knew that was a serious indication he could be dehydrated.

Once at the side of the futon, Sasuke laid his unconscious teammate down gently, uneasy gaze examining Naruto's flushed, dry skin.

"C'mon, usuratonkachi," Sasuke coaxed stiffly, patting Naruto's whiskered cheek in an attempt to bring him back to consciousness, "wake up."

It was several tense moments for Sasuke before Naruto came to; Sasuke expected his teammate to react somehow, but he just stared up at Sasuke crossly instead.

" _What?_ " the blonde snapped.

"I think you should drink some water."

Naruto looked back at him like it was a lot to ask for, but Sasuke wasn't bending on it and he went to grab the glass of water on the kitchen table in emphasis.

"Sit up and drink as much as you can," Sasuke required while he pulled his teammate up so he was sitting upright.

Naruto held the cup Sasuke handed to him heavily, looking down upon the water inside like it was one of the more foul things he'd set his eyes on.

"Drink it, dobe," Sasuke facilitated, watching while Naruto took a hesitant, uncomfortable sip at the glass. "That wasn't even close to enough," he pressed on when Naruto tried setting the cup down.

Sasuke didn't let him finish until Naruto handed back the cup with such force, he nearly dumped what remained inside in Sasuke's lap, but Naruto looked more concerned with keeping everything he drank down than whatever happened with the half-empty cup.

"I had a bowl," the blonde explained stiffly; Sasuke noticed it on the counter and quickly grabbed it, handing it to his teammate in time to catch everything Naruto was able to drink when he vomited it back out.

"Damn it, Naruto."

"I feel so sick," the blonde defended weakly.

If Sasuke had anything to say in response, it was cut off by a soft knock at the front door, earning the rapt attention of Sasuke and a weary glance from the blonde sitting at the edge of his bed.

"I'll get it."

" _No_ – don't let anyone in," Naruto groaned. "Just ignore it and leave out the window."

Sasuke didn't acknowledge his teammate while he pulled open the front door, finding Sakura waiting in the hallway.

"Sasuke-kun!" she exclaimed in surprise. "What're you doing here?"

Sasuke didn't respond verbally; he just pulled the door open more fully, nodding toward their blonde teammate who set the bowl in his hands on his bedside table so he could curl up back in bed, facing away from the entryway of his apartment.

"Are you here because of what I said?"

"Not because _you_ said it," Sasuke reassured coldly before adopting a lighter tone, "because there was _some_ truth to what it was. A small amount of truth – so impossibly small–"

" _Okay!_ " Sakura cut through, looked irritated with his backhanded answer as she let herself in to the studio apartment. "How's he doing?"

"The same, I guess?" Sasuke assumed flatly while he followed her back through the living space until he reached the chair at the kitchen table, pulling it out and spinning it so it faced Naruto's cot, sitting and watching from a respectful distance. "He's ten feet from you – why don't you ask him?"

"I feel great," Naruto answered dryly. "Thanks for coming by."

"Nice try, Naruto. But I'm not leaving," Sakura reassured with a knowing look while she approached his bed. "Give me your arm."

"Why?" Naruto questioned, hesitant to comply.

"Because I want to check your pulse," Sakura explained simply, reaching for her teammate's wrist to find his radial artery and feeling the speed of his racing heart. "Naruto, what are all your symptoms?"

"I dunno," Naruto sighed tiredly while he thought about it. "I can't stop throwing up and my stomach hurts."

"And you have a fever," she added, letting his wrist free and setting her hands in her lap. "Any congestion or cough – anything like that?"

"No."

"Hm," Sakura hummed in thought, "I'm no expert, but based on just that, I think you have food poisoning."

She stood and grabbed the bowl on the nightstand and Naruto complained, feeling hot with embarrassment over the idea of his childhood crush cleaning out a bowl of his vomit.

"I appreciate you're concern," Sakura began while she dumped the contents of the bowl down the sink before rinsing it out under the faucet, "but in the past six months working with Tsunade-sama in the hospital, I have seen _so_ much worse," the pink-haired kunoichi reassured with a dry laugh. "I'm a medic. This is why you're both lucky I'm you're teammate."

Naruto made a noise like he wasn't really convinced; he didn't lack confidence in her skill, but he definitely knew nothing she could say would ever make him comfortable with watching her carry out the less glorified tasks of healthcare.

When she returned to his bedside, she set the empty bowl back on his side table along with a tall glass of water.

"Sakura-chan," the blonde complained, eyes glued to the surface of the water inside the cup as it stilled, "don't ask me to drink that right now."

"I'm not asking," Sakura clarified simply while she plucked the bottle of Tylenol from the table to shake free two capsules into her palm. "Your skin is very hot and dry and your pulse is fast, Naruto."

"I'm just sick."

"Which is what made you dehydrated," Sakura concluded. "Being sick isn't an excuse to ignore your symptoms. Watch–" she pressed on, gently pinching a bit of skin near his wrist, which, more slowly than usual, stretched back into place, "your skin elasticity is bad. That's not a good sign, Naruto. See how my skin goes right back after I pinch it?" she explained, demonstrating on herself. "That's why you're going to drink this glass of water."

"If I have to drink that, I'll throw up."

"Yeah, we just tried that, about a minute before you rang the doorbell," Sasuke added casually, watching from where he sat in the kitchen. " _Without_ success."

Sakura nodded, processing the information quietly. "Ok this is what we're going to do – you're going to drink a tablespoon every five minutes until you're more hydrated, and if you still can't keep it down, I'm going to tell Kakashi-sensei to take you to the hospital."

Naruto made a noise in complaint, but didn't object otherwise.

"Come on then, sit up and have a sip."

"How much is a tablespoon?" Naruto asked while he slowly sat up.

"Quit stalling," Sakura scolded. "You know the answer to that."

"You know, he really might not," Sasuke interjected. "You have a lot of faith in his intelligence."

"Shut your _freaking_ mouth, Sasuke!" Naruto snapped, feeling more irritable than ever.

"You know what!" Sakura cut in loudly. " _Both_ of you shut up! Naruto, you're going to do what I say because I'm the medic and I know what's best. And Sasuke-kun, you're going to stop trying to pick a fight every five minutes!"

Both boys complied with their own versions of sour painted across their features, but beyond that, neither lifted a finger in complaint toward each other.

"Now drink the water, damn it."

Naruto complied with a groan in discontent, but was at least able to keep it down without feeling the urge to vomit it right back out and Sakura reinforced his behavior with a warm compliment Naruto knew he didn't really deserve.

Over the next several hours, Sakura was able to get Naruto to keep down several glasses of water along with regular medication to shear off the more dangerous degrees from his fever. He would openly admit – being hydrated made a world of difference. By the late afternoon, he was feeling much better than early this morning.

Sasuke remained surprisingly amicable; actually, Naruto was surprised he stuck around at all – there really wasn't any reason for him to.

In the later part of the afternoon, Kakashi stopped in to check on Naruto, pleasantly surprised to find his other two students already there.

"What an endearing picture," the man mentioned brightly while Sasuke's expression grew steadily more perturbed. "If I could redefine teamwork…"

Sasuke stood up out of the chair and dragged it back to the kitchen table where he'd taken it from before depositing himself on the couch at the other end of the studio apartment.

"Touched a nerve," the man guessed with a smiling eye while he approached Naruto's bedside. "How long have you two been here?"

"Well I got here around eight this morning, but Sasuke-kun was already here by the time I arrived."

Kakashi shot a surprised glance over his shoulder at Sasuke who did a remarkable job ignoring it with a cross glare directed at the wall.

"When's the last time you all ate something?"

"I had breakfast before leaving my house this morning," Sakura answered thoughtfully, "but I don't think Naruto's had anything, unless he had breakfast with Sasuke-kun."

"He didn't," Sasuke offered simply.

"Okay," Kakashi resolved while he removed his wallet from his pocket, "why don't you go grab some lunch for everyone, Sasuke?"

Sasuke got up from the couch, grabbing the cash from Kakashi's hand gladly, keen on getting out before Kakashi accused him of being a good friend or some other chummy form of vocabulary he didn't need to hear.

What he brought back was something bland and out of Naruto's typical preference; but right now, he couldn't be more grateful for the lack of flavor.

He didn't eat much, but something was better than eating nothing at all, and, like yesterday, he managed to keep down what he ate of his lunch.

Kakashi stayed with the three of them through the evening, seeing that they had dinner as well, but also like yesterday, Naruto felt his appetite slip away from him throughout the day, and he had a difficult time just smelling the food while it cooked.

Naruto curbed his upset stomach for as long as he could, but he felt so persistently sick to his stomach that he eventually slipped off to the bathroom to appease the nausea clawing at his stomach.

"Naruto?" Sakura called with a knock from the other side of the bathroom door. "Can I come in?"

"Fine," he groaned, while she slid the door open and slipped inside, carrying a glass of water and a bottle of pills.

"Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay."

"Sasuke-kun and Kakashi-sensei are cleaning up as soon as your dinner's finished and they'll put it in the fridge for another time when you're feeling up to eating."

Naruto felt heavy with guilt. "Sorry you all cooked for nothing."

"It wasn't for nothing," Sakura reassured kindly. "We managed to make you sick to your stomach, so there's _that_."

Naruto laughed a little in appreciation of her casual use of humor over something he carried a great amount of remorse. "Thanks, Sakura-chan."

"Sorry if the smell made you sick."

"Don't apologize for that," Naruto reassured quickly.

"I know you're probably not eager to eat or drink anything, but you really should take some Tylenol before going to bed," Sakura advised.

"Okay."

"Are you ready to try right now?"

"I dunno, maybe in a minute," the blonde compromised uneasily, wishing to both please Sakura and avoid consuming anything.

Over the next quarter of an hour, Sakura sat with him, coaxing him to drink some water and take something for his fever, but so far only provoking his nausea with each attempt.

"Can I just skip it?" the blonde requested sickly.

Sakura looked apologetic but unmoving. "No. It's important that you don't."

It was another ten minutes before his stomach grew still enough to keep down a sip of water and some Tylenol. He wasn't sure how long, or even _if_ it would stay down, but only time would tell on that.

Naruto shut the lid of the toilet and rested his overheated head in his arms atop the lid, wishing he could just lay down here on the bathroom floor to avoid the inevitable walk back to his bed; he felt taxed – his whole body ached from the exertion of getting sick, and it made his limbs feel sore and heavy with discomfort.

"Are you feeling well enough to go lie down?"

"I think so," Naruto agreed tiredly with no attempt toward standing up; instead, he sat, gathering whatever willpower he had left to get himself to his feet.

Sakura watched, waiting patiently for him to get up on his own. "Do you want help?" Naruto avoided her gaze but couldn't escape the inevitable truth that he did need help, even if he technically didn't _want_ it.

"Maybe you could just help me get up."

Without another word, Sakura helped her teammate to his feet, following him out of the bathroom to provide assistance should he need it.

But he made it to his bed without further incident, and while he sat at the edge of his bed, he took a brief glance around his apartment at his teammates and teacher – he felt a surge of gratitude toward each of them; six months ago, not a single person would have bothered checking in on him.

oOoOo

Sasuke heard Naruto close himself in the bathroom before he saw it, shoulders sagging when he realized his teammate was getting sick just minutes before his dinner would be finished.

"What the hell," he complained, turning his gaze on Kakashi.

"It's not his fault, Sasuke," the man reminded Sasuke patiently.

"Whatever."

Without needing to discuss it, the pair of them let the food finish cooking before cleaning it up and putting it all away.

Sasuke closed Naruto's fridge after placing a container of soup inside, turning to work on the sink of dishes; he caught Kakashi's blatant stare and ignored it – but he could feel Kakashi's one, persistent eye drilling into the back of his head while he flipped on the faucet and he knew it wouldn't be so easy.

"Sasuke –"

"Let me guess," Sasuke interjected, "you want a favor from me."

"Smart as a whip," Kakashi confirmed while Sasuke rolled his eyes in aggravation.

"What is it?"

"I'm worried about your teammate," Kakashi began more seriously.

"Yeah, he's a mess," Sasuke agreed stiffly. "If I hadn't been here this morning, he probably would've cracked his head open on the kitchen floor."

" _What?_ " Kakashi pressed. "Why?"

"Because he's sick," Sasuke answered simply, earning an unimpressed glance from his teacher in response.

"Why didn't you say anything before now?"

"Sakura came over not long after that and she took care of it. He was doing better until now."

Kakashi took a moment to contemplate the information Sasuke gave him. "I want you to stay here tonight to keep an eye on him."

"Fine."

"Just keep an eye on his fever."

"Uh-huh."

"And if you need help, come get me."

 **A/N:** Thanks so much to those of you following/favoriting/reviewing, especially those who take the time to review! Thank you so much! See you all again soon :)


	4. Part Four

**Reality Bites**

 **Part Four**

In all his twelve years of life, Naruto couldn't recall a time he was ever so sick – so sick it both sucked the energy from him and made it hard to fall asleep. When he did sleep, it wasn't restful.

Naruto woke late in the night with a sense of anxiety, like someone was watching him, and he jumped, feeling startled when his gaze fell upon the clone standing beside his bed, looking down on him coldly – a stark contrast to the heat around him, which felt more intense than ever.

Naruto stared up at himself, trying to remember the moment he'd summoned a clone and coming up blank. It made him uneasy – but not nearly as uneasy as he felt when he tried to dispel the clone and couldn't.

"What d'you want?" he breathed anxiously, earning no significant response from the clone at his side.

" _You know what I want, you tiny, insignificant mortal. You know what I want._ "

The voice was powerful and dark and came not from the clone, but from deep inside his own mind; Naruto knew it was the demon within him speaking to him.

Naruto inspected the clone beside him closer, gaze drawn to the pronounced whisker marks and the dark red eyes above them staring down callously at him. He wondered if Kyuubi was capable of taking control of one of his clones; but then he looked to his own hands and noticed the sharp, angry claws rising out of his nail beds – it seemed more likely it was just him losing control of Kyuubi's chakra deep in his exhaustion, and his clone was along for the unfortunate ride.

"Is it Kyuubi?" he pursued, staring up at his clone uneasily. "Are you being controlled by Kyuubi? Is that why I can't get rid of you?"

"C'mon, Naruto," his clone reprimanded, "get yourself together."

" _Okay_ ," Naruto agreed, feeling desperate to appease the demon within him; maybe Kyuubi _was_ perfectly capable of creating and controlling one of his clones after all, "just don't hurt anyone."

" _I will kill you and use your dead body to massacre every villager and every person you know._ "

Naruto tried not to panic – negative emotion tended to only feed Kyuubi's control over him in the past – but it was just about impossible to remain calm when the clone standing beside his bed reached for him, pulling him out of bed to drag him toward the bathroom.

"What're you doing?!" he shrieked anxiously, trying to struggle free but coming up short against the immeasurable strength of the clone gripping him.

He was pulled into the bathroom, toward the tub, all his effort to struggle himself free producing little effect. He was picked up and maneuvered inside without much warning, the cold water collecting at the bottom of the tub fueling his resistance against the firm hands holding him where he sat waist deep in cold, unwelcoming water and feeling eager to escape it.

"No – wait!" he cried helplessly. " _Wait!_ "

But he was firmly and easily shoved down against the bottom of the tub, shoulder deep in water so cold it seemed to bite at his overheated skin, driving his muscles into an immediate and tense shiver; he would probably be drowned any moment – probably the moment the water level climbed a few more inches and blocked his airways – and there wasn't a single thing he could do about it.

His last resort was usually Kyuubi – but his last resort wasn't usually actively trying to drown him; and Naruto struggled to face the reality of his impending mortality.

Never the type to throw in the towel, he yelled for help even though no one would hear it.

" _Someone help me!_ "

But no one answered and he knew no one would.

oOo

Several hours earlier

oOo

"Naruto," Kakashi began airily while he and Sakura prepared to leave for the night. "Your dinner's in the fridge and ready to go when you're feeling up to eating, ok?"

Naruto nodded in acknowledgement from where he sat at the edge of his bed, but didn't lift his gaze much further than the floor.

"Do you have a spare key?" Kakashi asked.

"Um – yeah," Naruto remembered, spending more time on thinking about where it was than he probably should have needed on a regular day, "in the kitchen drawer closest to the front door."

Kakashi located it with no issue and plucked it from the place Naruto said it would be. "I'm borrowing it for now," he clarified while he shut the drawer and reached for the front door. "Sasuke's staying here tonight to make sure you're ok."

"Wait! Don't leave me with him!" Naruto complained helplessly. "He'll kill me in my sleep or something."

"No," Kakashi laughed, "he won't."

"Well – he might _try_."

"He's your teammate, Naruto. And he's staying to make sure your fever stays down," Kakashi finalized endearingly. "See you two in the morning."

Naruto watched the door shut after Sakura and Kakashi as they left before his disenchanted gaze fell upon Sasuke.

"I promise I'll be _nice_ ," Sasuke claimed, emphasizing the last word like it was something stupid.

"Yeah well I'm not promising shit," Naruto contradicted while he pulled his covers up over his head and turned on his side away from Sasuke.

"Did you take anything recently?" Sasuke pressed, unwilling to let him sleep without medication in his stomach.

"Yeah, a little bit ago," Naruto breathed, feeling so drained he forgot to mention that he also threw it up not five minutes after.

"Okay, then I'll let you get some rest."

"I know that you're only here 'cuz Kakashi-sensei told you to stay," Naruto confessed tiredly. "But you could go – I wouldn't say anything, y'know."

Sasuke responded with a condescending noise. "Shut up and go to sleep."

And that was exactly what Naruto did, because he didn't feel he had the energy to stay awake much longer than that.

oOoOo

For several hours, Sasuke watched Naruto while he slept, unguarded and oblivious to his own candid demonstration of vulnerability. Sasuke knew, if Naruto could see how helpless he looked now, he'd hate that it was Sasuke of all people there to witness it.

Naruto breathed quicker than normal, nearly every exhale accompanied by a soft noise of discomfort. Sasuke placed a hand across Naruto's clammy, over-heated forehead, feeling perturbed that it didn't wake him.

" _Naruto_ ," Sasuke tried softly, moving a cool hand to each of Naruto's whiskered cheeks to give him a gentle pat. "Naruto, wake up."

Naruto woke with a jump, wrapping his startled, trembling hands around Sasuke's wrists, his fever-bright eyes finding Sasuke's gaze and holding it for a tense moment; Sasuke could feel the unease rolling off his teammate in waves and he wished he knew the proper words to reassure him.

"What d'you want?" Naruto asked groggily, features pinched with distrust as he weakly pushed Sasuke's hands away from his face.

"You should take some more Tylenol," Sasuke explained neutrally, shaking free a pair of capsules into his palm. "I think your fever is back up."

Naruto stared back at him, determining if there was any truth to what Sasuke said.

"Sit up and take these."

"I know, ok?" Naruto snapped back callously.

"Ok, then do it," Sasuke conceded, waiting for Naruto to comply on his own. " _Naruto_."

"Just leave me alone!"

"If you take these, I will."

Naruto grabbed the pills out of Sasuke's hands to throw them right back in his face without a single ounce of hesitation over it.

"Damn it," Sasuke complained. "Quit screwing around, Naruto!"

"Stop telling me what to do!" he bit back irately.

"I wish I didn't have to but you're being an _idiot_ ," Sasuke retorted crossly, coming off sounding harsher than he meant to.

"I'm not as stupid as you think," Naruto claimed slowly. "I know what you're trying to do."

" _What?_ " Sasuke took a moment to consider what Naruto was saying; what the hell was he even talking about? "Naruto–" he tried again, "who do you think you're talking to?"

The question made Naruto stop to think and very suddenly, he didn't look so sure – Sasuke felt his aggravation dissolve into concern.

"You know it's Sasuke, right?" the brunette reassured stiffly.

Naruto hesitated to think about it for an unsure moment, shooting the brunette a brief, sidelong glance. "Yeah," he responded, unconvinced.

"So would you sit up and take these to help your fever?

Without waiting to hear an argument, Sasuke helped pull his teammate up so he was sitting before turning his attention on the bottle of pills on the bedside table; from the corner of his eye, he watched Naruto sway where he sat and immediately set down the medicine to grab hold of him.

"Don't you faint on me again, dobe."

But before Sasuke could even finish speaking, Naruto's head rolled forward, and he was limp in Sasuke's arms for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.

Sasuke laid Naruto back down gently, examining his flushed skin; Naruto had been running a good fever, but his skin felt hotter now than ever; so hot, in fact, that Sasuke felt the instinct to pull the covers from his overheated skin, tossing them to the end of the bed in an attempt to let the colder air outside his blankets cool his skin but feeling like it still wasn't enough.

He didn't know what to do; but he did know who to go to for help – so he summoned a clone and sent it on its way, praying it wasn't long before help arrived.

oOoOo

When Kakashi ordered Sasuke to stay at Naruto's, he expected some light arguing at most – but he didn't expect Sasuke should need his help. Naruto was pretty sick, but he was still taking fluids and keeping many of them down.

So he was mildly surprised when he heard an urgent knocking at his front door and he got up quickly to answer it.

"Sasuke," Kakashi greeted, "everything alright?"

"I need your help."

"Is it Naruto?" the man asked seriously.

"I can't get his fever down."

"Well did you give him anything for it?" Kakashi asked, earning an unimpressed glare in return.

"Will you just come help?" Sasuke finally asked. "He won't take any medicine from me and I think he's delirious and I don't know what to do."

"Okay," Kakashi reassured quickly in an attempt to make Sasuke slow down, "let me get some shoes, alright?"

"Just hurry up, ok?" Sasuke interjected before the clone disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving Kakashi alone in the silence following his departure; he quickly slipped on his shoes and set out for Naruto's apartment, arriving in just several short minutes.

But for Sasuke, it didn't feel so short; he stood beside Naruto, the bedroom window open to let in the cold, evening air from outside while he gently wiped the skin of his teammate's face with a wet washcloth in an attempt to cool him down.

Sasuke glanced over his shoulder at the man as he let himself in to the apartment, the panic clear in his young face.

"He's been unconscious for like five minutes," Sasuke explained quickly. "And he's too hot – I dunno what else to do."

"You did everything just right," Kakashi reassured, making his way to Sasuke's side. "Naruto," the man beckoned, gently patting his whiskered cheek in an attempt to rouse him. "Wake up, Naruto."

"I've been trying that –" Sasuke started before Naruto finally opened his unfocused eyes.

"Naruto," Kakashi tried again, trying to catch his gaze by snapping his fingers in front of Naruto's blue, fever-glazed eyes. " _Naruto_."

But he was about as responsive to the people around him as he was when his eyes were closed.

"What the hell's going on with him?"

"I think it's his fever – it was smart to come get me, Sasuke," Kakashi mentioned uneasily. "I'm gonna go fill the tub with cool water – would you stay and watch him?"

Sasuke nodded in response, watching while Naruto let his eyes slip back shut, lying near the brink of returning to sleep after a short moment of leaving it.

Several quiet minutes passed while Sasuke listened to the water filling the bath before he noticed Naruto's blue, fever-bright eyes looking up at Sasuke, inspecting the brunette beside him with uncertainty. Sasuke wondered briefly if Naruto was still half asleep.

"What d'you want?" Naruto slurred at him deliriously.

Sasuke just looked back at him uneasily, unsure that anything he said would be better than saying nothing at all.

"Is it Kyuubi?" he pressed on. "Are you being controlled by Kyuubi? Is that why I can't get rid of you?"

"C'mon, Naruto," Sasuke motivated, his concern sounding stiff even to himself, "get yourself together."

" _Okay_ ," Naruto conceded urgently, "just don't hurt anyone."

"How's he doing, Sasuke?" Kakashi asked from the bathroom over the noise of the water filling the tub; Sasuke could feel the fear painted across his teammate's features when he looked down at him.

"He's not good."

Kakashi glanced toward the level of the bathwater before leaving the bathroom to come to Naruto's side. "Okay, let's get him in the water."

Sasuke reached for Naruto, grabbing hold of him at the same time Kakashi did, and the two of them pulled the blonde to the edge of the bed and up on to unstable feet.

" _What're you doing?_ " Naruto panicked, resisting uselessly against the two carrying him across his apartment.

"We're trying to help you, Naruto," Kakashi reassured to no effect while they dragged him into the bathroom, toward the edge of the tub, maneuvering him inside with little difficulty. "You're okay."

"Just – _quit struggling_ , you idiot," Sasuke snapped when Naruto felt the water collected at the bottom of the tub as he was set in it, waist deep, and resisted with renewed vigor.

"No – wait!" Naruto cried, looking defenseless and afraid. " _Wait!_ "

"Sasuke, watch his head," Kakashi advised while Naruto writhed against them, eager to escape.

Sasuke put his forearm against the rim of the tub so that when Naruto threw his head back in his toil to break free, it connected with Sasuke's appendage instead of the unforgiving porcelain beneath it. Sasuke wasn't easily rattled, but his teammate's defiant behavior was sudden and startling, and he felt his frayed nerves through his racing heart.

"What the hell's going on with him?"

"His fever's really high – he's probably hallucinating," Kakashi guessed unsurely, his features as uneasy as Sasuke's. "For all we know, he thinks we're trying to drown him."

Sasuke felt a renewed empathy for his teammate, trying his best not to let Naruto hurt himself in his delirium. Naruto continued to struggle fruitlessly against the pair of them while he was immersed in the tub, unwilling to admit defeat as he grabbed desperately at the arms holding him down.

"Sasuke, hand me one of those towels," Kakashi requested with a nod at the towel rack; Sasuke yanked one free and handed it over without hesitation.

Kakashi reached for the towel, Naruto's small hand still clinging to his forearm while he maneuvered the towel into the water and under his delirious young student's head – Naruto seemed to figure out Kakashi was only holding him down with one hand and Sasuke moved to help keep his teammate down when he kicked his feet against the wall of the tub in an attempt to push his way free.

With Sasuke's help Naruto was, once again, easily subdued, and wasn't going anywhere until they let him go; Kakashi could feel the panic and frustration it caused him through the grip of the small hands clinging to him; he could feel it as clearly as he could see it in his young student's frightened, pinched features, eyes shut tight while he strained, to no avail, against the firm grip holding him to the bottom of the tub where he shivered, hard, in the cold bath water.

" _Someone help me!_ "

"You're okay, Naruto," Kakashi reassured, overwhelmed with the guilt it caused him to hold Naruto down. "You're okay."

But Naruto either didn't hear him or didn't believe him, and he continued to struggle helplessly against them, weak from his fever but unwilling to admit defeat.

It felt like an eternity before Naruto tired himself out and stopped struggling, and another still before his fever came down far enough for him to mostly come out of his delirium – but in all reality, it was less than half an hour in total they spent in the bathroom, doing what felt like torture to their youngest counterpart.

"Kakashi-sensei," Naruto breathed warily, still anxious and uneasy, but more alert than he'd been all evening, "what's going on?"

Kakashi seemed relieved that Naruto at least acknowledged one of them for the first time since the man got here – never mind that the sick blonde didn't seem to remember the last half an hour or so. "Your fever was pretty bad, Naruto," he explained, releasing his grip on his student. "We had to get it down right away."

"So that's why I'm in the tub."

"Yeah."

Naruto moved to sit up and Kakashi helped him get there. "I don't feel good."

"I know, but you're gonna be ok," Kakashi reassured easily while he held out a thermometer for Naruto who let him set it directly in his mouth, too tired to take it from him like before. "Your fever is down," the man commented after three minutes passed and he was able to read the temperature on the thermometer. "Why don't we get you out of there?"

Naruto nodded in concurrence – Kakashi picked him up and set him on his feet on the tile floor beside the bath before draping a towel around his shuddering form; his towels weren't very big, but neither was Naruto, and when Kakashi wrapped it around his shivering student, it covered him from his shoulders to his knees.

Once wrapped in a dry towel, Kakashi moved him to sit on the closed lid of the toilet so he wouldn't have to stay on his feet while he dried off.

In their haste to combat his fever, they wasted no time with removing his clothes before putting him in the water, so Naruto sat in wet clothes, his muscles burning with fatigue while he gathered whatever willpower he had left to get himself out of them.

"Sasuke brought you a dry set of clothes," the silver-haired man informed with a nod toward a dry shirt and pair of boxers folded and stacked neatly on the bathroom counter; Sasuke must have folded them because Naruto knew the brunette wouldn't have found them that way. "Arms up," Kakashi instructed; Naruto did his best to comply while Kakashi maneuvered the wet shirt from his torso.

"Naruto, how long has your seal been like this?" Kakashi inquired firmly; it wasn't the first time he'd seen Naruto's seal appear, but it usually wasn't random when it popped up either – as far as he knew.

Naruto looked down to see what he was talking about. "I dunno, a couple days?"

"As in the same time you started feeling sick?" Kakashi corroborated while he slipped the dry shirt over Naruto's head, helping guide his arms through the sleeves when he had a little trouble doing it himself.

"I guess," Naruto admitted in frustration, "but it happens all the time, even when nothing's going on."

Kakashi wasn't sure if Naruto was lying or not and knew he really had no way to confirm the truth; he began to suspect something more serious than the flu could be at play – something he debated internally while he let Naruto change out of his damp boxers and into his dry pair when the boy insisted he could do it on his own.

"Unless you make some sort of miraculous comeback by tomorrow morning, I'm taking you in to see Tsunade-sama."

Naruto complained with an annoyed noise, but didn't voice an argument beyond that – maybe because he knew Kakashi wasn't just being overly cautious.

"Now let's get you back into bed so you can get some rest until then," the man directed, helping Naruto out of the bathroom; Sasuke sat in his chair from the table, watching while Kakashi got Naruto settled, feeding him another round of Tylenol before letting him slip under his covers and return to sleep.

"I'm staying here if you want to go home, Sasuke," Kakashi explained quietly. "Thanks for watching out for your teammate. You did a good job."

Sasuke responded with a condescending noise. "I did a shitty job – look what happened to him."

"That wasn't your fault," Kakashi reassured easily. "If you weren't here, who knows what would have happened."

Sasuke shrugged in concord, but didn't seem to internally agree with letting himself off the hook as easily as Kakashi.

"You can go, but you don't have to," Kakashi reworded. "You've been very helpful, so if you want to stay, that'd be great."

Sasuke avoided Kakashi's single eye while he thought about it. "Fine," he determined rigidly, "I'll stay – since it sounds like you need me to."

 **A/N:** Thanks again to everyone reading! Thanks twice to those who take the time to review! :)


	5. Part Five

**Reality Bites**

 **Part Five**

For the greater part of the rest of that morning, Naruto slept, exhausted from his fever and the ordeal it put him through.

But Sasuke and Kakashi – neither felt much like sleep; each of them felt so packed with adrenalin that sleep was just about the last thing on each of their minds.

So both waited, watching over their teammate closely until the early hours of the morning rolled closer to the clinic's opening hour.

Kakashi roused the small blonde, using several attempts before he came to, and when he did finally open his eyes, he looked as exhausted and worn out as when he'd closed them several hours ago.

"Naruto, we're getting ready to take you in to see Tsunade-sama, okay?"

"Okay."

"I've already contacted her and she's expecting you at the clinic when it opens, so if you need to do anything before we leave, you have about half an hour."

"Actually," Naruto realized, unsettled, "I do have to do something." And then he promptly got up and went for the bathroom, vomiting into the toilet for what felt like the hundredth time since first feeling sick several days ago.

Unlike every previous round of sickness so far, this one left him in a world of horrible pain – pain so sharp and severe, he could do nothing but kneel stiffly before the toilet and hope it went away quickly.

But the discomfort tore through him from deep in his stomach without mercy, time doing nothing but adding to his level of pain.

With a heavy, trembling hand, Naruto wiped at his chin in an attempt to clean himself up, but his hand came back coated in blood and he felt his heart race from the unease it brought him. His sudden pain alone was frightening, but the amount of blood that had come out of him felt even scarier.

He wasn't sure what to do – wasn't sure what he _could_ do; all movement, even that of his quick, short breathing, caused him agony. Even staying perfectly still, he was suffering the severe discomfort. It seemed there was nothing he could do but try not to make it feel worse.

So he stayed right where he was, clinging firmly to the seat of the toilet in an attempt to still his trembling form.

Beneath everything, his seal burned where it spiraled across his abdomen, and he suspected now, more than ever, that Kyuubi's seal surfaced to hurt him – not to help him.

oOoOo

Kakashi could hear how miserable Naruto sounded through the door; he was having a hell of a time trying to bounce back from this one. There wasn't a bone in Kakashi's body second-guessing his decision to take Naruto in.

"Sasuke, would you go check on him?" Kakashi asked with a glance toward his watch.

"Fine," Sasuke agreed while he grabbed the doorknob and let himself in without bothering to knock. "How's it going, dobe?" he began apathetically before his gaze fell upon Naruto's stiff and uncomfortable form as he clung to the toilet he kneeled before, trembling and sweating, his breathing short and erratic.

Sasuke noticed Naruto's hands and the blood covering his palms; he examined where it was smeared across the toilet seat in the areas where Naruto clung to the porcelain with blood stained fingers.

"Naruto?" Sasuke began again while he kneeled down next to his teammate to inspect him closer; there was blood staining his mouth and chin and it looked like he did his best to wipe it away, but still the evidence remained.

" _Don't_ touch me," the blonde grit out between tightly clenched teeth.

"Okay," Sasuke complied easily; he felt his stomach drop at the amount of blood in the toilet because, although he knew next to nothing about medicine, he _did_ know some of the major red flags, and he knew this was one of them. " _Kakashi!_ " he called urgently, earning the man's attention from his tone alone.

"What is it?" Kakashi asked anxiously while he appeared in the doorway.

Sasuke moved aside so the silver-haired man could get through and when he saw what Sasuke saw, he asked the young brunette to wait outside the small restroom.

"Naruto," Kakashi began with a gentle hand on his student's trembling back, "It's time to go see Tsunade-sama."

"No! Don't move me!" he complained quickly.

"Naruto–"

"Don't touch me!" the blonde pressed on, cutting through his teacher anxiously, his breathing quick and short. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Look at the toilet, Naruto," Kakashi argued with a nod toward the blood pooling at the bottom of the ceramic bowl. "You have to see a doctor."

"No, I'll be ok," Naruto insisted uneasily, like he knew it was wishful thinking but couldn't quite admit it. "Kyuubi can fix whatever's wrong."

"I think Kyuubi _is_ whatever's wrong," Kakashi admitted; Naruto tried choking down the frustrated sob in his chest before it could escape because he knew Kakashi was probably right and it scared the hell right out of him.

"I'm –" he began anxiously, unsure how to say what he meant without sounding pathetic – but he _felt_ pathetic, and the pain he was in was downright debilitating; he was terrified with the idea of aggravating it with movement. "I can't –"

"Naruto, what are you worried about?" Kakashi rationalized. "Tsunade-sama cares deeply for you. You know she'd never mistreat you."

"I _know_."

"So what's the problem?"

"I dunno," the blonde whined anxiously.

Kakashi suspected Naruto _did_ know what was rooting him to the ground, but he also guessed Naruto wasn't going to work out the communication skills that no one ever taught him on his bathroom floor while he was sick as all hell.

"C'mon, Naruto," Kakashi coaxed with a hand around his upper arm, near his shoulder. "I'll help you up if you need it, but you're going to see Tsunade-sama right now, whether you get there yourself or not."

Naruto didn't argue or try to shrug Kakashi off, but he didn't try getting up on his own either – maybe because he already knew he couldn't; all he could do was try not to outwardly complain over the pain he was in when Kakashi pulled him to his feet.

Kakashi watched his student closely, feeling sympathetic while Naruto tried, unsuccessfully, to contain his misery; he could see the distress Naruto was in and hear it in his quick, short breathing.

"Doing ok?"

"I'm fine!" Naruto snapped through his teeth, the discomfort he was feeling leaking into his tone.

"Slow down and take a deep breath, Naruto."

"No, I can't," the boy admitted uneasily.

"Why not?"

"It hurts so much."

"Okay," Kakashi reassured quickly, "let's just focus on getting to the hospital."

But the first step Kakashi took forward pulled an agonized groan from the young blonde at his side, bringing the pair of them to a sudden halt while Naruto clung firmly to the countertop beside him.

"I can't!" Naruto insisted anxiously. "Let me down!"

Kakashi didn't let his student go, but he could already tell there was no way Naruto could walk all the way to the hospital – even _with_ Kakashi's help, it'd be long and torturous. So it took the silver-haired man very little time to arrive at the decision to simply pick the boy up.

Naruto tried strangling down the shriek of anguish from the pain that assaulted him when he was moved into Kakashi's arms, but he couldn't have managed it even if he was anticipating the pain – the agony was incredible.

Vaguely, he noticed that Kakashi was speaking, but Naruto was quite sure the man was addressing his teammate rather than him, so he invested his attention on getting as much air as his deprived lungs would allow, feeling tortured by his own body, dizzy, and starved of oxygen yet unable to take a deep enough breath to satiate it.

The next thing he knew, they were outside the hospital, and he was sure Kakashi had teleported them there – that, or he'd been deeply unconscious, which wouldn't have been hard for him to believe either.

In minutes, Kakashi had taken them through the hospital doors and was shown to a room of gurneys separated by curtains; he set Naruto in an empty bed the medic told him was available.

Naruto laid on his side, curled in on himself while he kept still, his muscles trembling in his discomfort beneath his stiff demeanor. Kakashi watched, hoping his breathing would even out now that he was stationary, but he still seemed to be in incredible pain, unable to escape it even while he laid as stiff and still as possible.

A medic soon came by to take Naruto's vitals; he didn't resist or fight her, but he didn't really acknowledge her either.

"We need the Hokage," Kakashi clarified to the medic assessing Naruto's condition. "We were supposed to meet her in the clinic this morning, but he got a lot worse since last speaking with her, which is why we came here. Could you get ahold of her?"

"I can track her down," the young woman considered thoughtfully while she released the tension on the blood pressure cuff she'd velcroed around his upper arm and pulled the stethoscope from her ears to record her reading.

"I appreciate it," Kakashi acknowledged gratefully; he knew medics were busy and had little time for running errands like tracking each other down.

"It's no problem," the medic reassured genuinely before addressing Naruto in a softer voice. "Tsunade-sama will come by to see you soon, ok, Naruto-kun?"

But, like before, he didn't really acknowledge her while she departed. After that, it was only minutes before Tsunade found her way to them from the clinic; Kakashi knew she would drop just about anything for Naruto, and this was no exception.

"I hear my favorite genin is here to see me," Tsunade greeted while she turned the corner of the room holding Naruto. "Whoops, hopefully your teammates aren't here to hear that," she pressed on, glancing around to confirm whether or not they were present. "Ah, whatever. Let 'em hear."

Naruto didn't acknowledge her either – just laid there in pain like he had been since arriving, and she grew more serious upon realizing something was truly wrong.

"Not feeling so good, Naruto?" she asked the boy on the gurney while she pulled her stethoscope from around her shoulders to stick in the eartips and press the drum against different points on his back and chest, listening closely.

His demeanor and his pulse told Tsunade he was in pain; she tried getting a closer look at his abdomen but he was guarding it firmly enough to tell her that's where it was coming from. She moved his arms out of her way and he either stiffly let her or wasn't strong enough to put up a struggle.

She inspected the seal – felt the heat radiating from it before tapping gently at his abdominal wall, listening to the hallow sound that echoed back through her stethoscope, and he groaned miserably in response.

"Sorry, kiddo," she apologized softly while she removed the stethoscope from her ears to sling it back around her neck. "When did all this start?"

If he heard her, he did a spectacular job of ignoring her and she responded in patience.

"Naruto, I need you to focus for a second," she pressed on, earning a brief glance in acknowledgement from the trembling boy on the gurney. "When did you first start feeling unwell?"

"I uhm…" he began helplessly, wracking what was left of his consciousness in an attempt to comply – but he couldn't and he panicked, filling the void with incomplete nonsense. "I have – my status –"

"Okay," Tsunade reassured, more worried over his current state of disorientation than when it started.

"It started three days ago as far as I know," Kakashi answered in Naruto's stead. "I thought it was just food poisoning or the flu until he started vomiting blood. That's why I brought him here instead of the clinic."

Tsunade nodded, inspecting the angry, hot seal upon her patient's abdomen. "Know anything about the seal? Has it been bothering him?"

"I really don't know," Kakashi admitted. "I think it has but he won't admit it."

"And besides the obvious pain he's in and the blood in his vomit, was there anything else really? Fever, cough, anything like that?"

"He had a fever last night that scared the hell out of me and Sasuke, but it came down after a few minutes in a cool bath," Kakashi offered in thought, "but other than that, I haven't really noticed anything."

"Okay," the woman assessed with a thoughtful look toward her patient, "I'm going to order a couple things but I already suspect what's going on."

Tsunade turned her attention on her suffering patient.

"I'll be right back with something for your pain Naruto, and then I'm going to have some tests done, alright?"

Like before, Naruto was too consumed by his pain to spare a thought on acknowledging her. The medications Tsunade brought back made him feel spacy and out-of-touch, but hardly touched the agony in his stomach –still, Naruto would take any distance from the pain offered to him, even if it was as short as an inch. At least now he could put two words together, even if it was strained and difficult to do so.

The tests that followed were typically short and painless, but for Naruto it felt long and taxing – even sitting up for an x-ray of his abdomen was demanding, and it felt like no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't sit up straight enough.

By the end of it, he was wheeled off into a room where he lay, strung out from the cocktail of drugs Tsunade had pumped through the IV catheter in his hand and feeling breathless even as he laid still in his hospital bed. Outside, Tsunade consulted the results of the tests she'd ordered with Kakashi, holding out an x-ray film toward the light to better see it.

"See that?" she began quietly with a gesture toward an area of the film in her hand. "That's air in the abdominal cavity. And it's coming from a hole in Naruto's stomach. That's what's causing him such severe pain – and what makes it difficult for him to take a deep breath."

"Is that common?" Kakashi questioned, just as quietly. "What causes that?"

"Several things, but in Naruto's case, it's a gastric ulcer that's perforated the stomach lining. Problem is, it's presenting in an unusual way. Typically these ulcers manifest from inside and move outward. But for him, it's like something's burning through from the outside in."

"Kyuubi's chakra," Kakashi guessed.

"My thoughts exactly," Tsunade agreed. "If you looked into that hospital room with your sharingan, I bet you'd see Kyuubi all over his chakra system. And I'm sure that when I go to heal that perforation, I'll feel it in his system, too."

"So what can you do about it?"

Tsunade took a brief moment to reply, perhaps unsettled by her own answer. "Manage his symptoms."

"So basically nothing."

"I've contacted Jiraiya," she evaded. "He should be here by nightfall."

"And in the meantime?"

"Like I said – manage his symptoms."

And with that, she slid the door open and entered Naruto's room to find Naruto more alert than before – perhaps with the aid of the medication he was given – watching her while she approached his bed. On top of all the pain he was in, he looked young and frightened, a stark contrast to his usual demeanor.

"What's gonna happen to me?" he asked between his teeth, his voice hardly louder than a whisper.

"You're fine, Naruto," she reassured easily while she took out several syringes from the pockets of her shirt to set them on the metal table beside the bed; behind her, Kakashi, too, slipped into the room, hanging near the door in an attempt to both give Naruto privacy and be there for him. "You have an ulcer that perforated your stomach lining, but I'm going to fix it."

"And then I'll be better," Naruto grit out tightly, like he wasn't so sure, "right?"

"Before you know it," she promised casually; Naruto looked back at her with eyebrows furrowed while she uncapped his IV and started cleaning it with an alcohol pad.

"Y'know," Naruto pressed on between his teeth, "a fox can hear a watch ticking from forty yards away."

Tsunade hesitated with cleaning the port for a brief second, positive that what he really meant was, _I heard everything you said to Kakashi in the hallway_. "That's very fascinating," she humored evasively, screwing on a syringe from the table and pushing in the medication slowly. "Where'd you learn that?"

Naruto felt the drug in the syringe while she pushed it in, feeling heavier with each drop that went into his veins. "What's really happening?"

"You know what, brat?" the woman concluded while she pulled off the syringe, cleaned the port, and capped it off. "You should just let me worry about it," she eluded, holding up a hand and letting the chakra gather across her palm until it was so densely concentrated that her hand glowed a soft, sea green.

Naruto didn't voice any further questions, but he was visibly upset by her response and Tsunade had a hard time swallowing down the guilt the betrayed look on his face stirred in her gut.

"That pain medication I just gave you should be peaking right about now. Brace yourself. It'll be quick and you'll feel better after," the woman reassured; Naruto knew what she really meant was, it'd hurt but he'd feel better after – he was no stranger to chakra-induced healing and he already knew it would be painful.

It was as painful as he'd anticipated, but as quick as she'd promised it'd be as well; the moment she'd finished, the effect on his pain was instantaneous – he felt, for the first time since early this morning in his bathroom, like he could lay there without every muscle in his body clenched from the discomfort he'd felt.

"How's your pain?"

"So much better," Naruto responded honestly. "I think I can go home now."

Tsunade laughed at his bid, glad he at least felt well enough for now to try and get discharged. "Nice try brat. You're not going anywhere for at least a day."

"Why?" Naruto pressed, determined to lay as many traps as he could with her excuses to keep him here.

"I want to find out what's making you sick."

"Don't you already know?"

"I know your symptoms."

"I know you're just keeping me here until Ero-sennin gets back," Naruto snapped impatiently. "What's the difference between being here or going home?"

"So you _did_ hear our conversation in the hallway."

"Yeah, I thought that was obvious."

"Alright – you know what? You're more of a smart-ass when Kyuubi's chakra is all over your system so I guess I'll stop beating around the bush for your own sake," Tsunade caved. "I'm keeping you here so if your stomach tears open again, you don't hemorrhage and die alone in your apartment like you might have if not for Kakashi. And yes, also so that when Jiraiya gets here, we don't have to waste time tracking you down. So settle in, because you're at least spending the night."

If Naruto had an argument, he didn't have time to voice it as the door slid open, revealing his two teammates who entered from the hall, each looking their own version of worried.

"Sasuke?" Kakashi greeted. "And Sakura? Were you so worried, you went to fetch Sakura, Sasuke?"

"No," Sasuke responded flatly. "What a dumb conclusion. She was on her way to check in on Naruto while I was on my way out after you two left."

"Yeah, but he wasn't as casual as he's trying to sound right now," Sakura added gladly.

"Shut up, Sakura," Sasuke warned irately. "You weren't there last night or this morning. I was –" Sasuke paused, realizing what he was about to say and reevaluating how he wanted to proceed, "uneasy."

"I think the word you're looking for is 'worried'," Sakura offered casually; Sasuke looked irritated, but didn't engage in further argument. "What happened anyway?"

The next several minutes, Tsunade spent catching Sakura up, using a lot of medical jargon neither Naruto nor Sasuke really understood.

"Don't you have a million things better to do than be here?" Naruto shot to Sasuke who responded with an entertained smile.

"Yeah, but a dead teammate would probably set me back on my path to chuunin so looks like I'm stuck making sure something pathetic like food poisoning doesn't kill you."

"It's not food poisoning," Sakura corrected soberly, earning the attention of her two male teammates. "It's chakra poisoning."

 **A/N:** If you think I can't torture Naruto any more than I already have, just stay tuned :P As always, thanks so much for reading! If you've got the time, I would love to hear your feedback. See you all next time :]


	6. Part Six

**Reality Bites**

 **Part Six**

"It's not food poisoning," Sakura corrected soberly, earning the attention of her two male teammates. "It's chakra poisoning."

Naruto suddenly looked busy staring with narrow eyes at an empty corner of the room, hoping that would be it and Sakura wouldn't expand on it.

"He's being poisoned by his own chakra?" Sasuke asked, sounding skeptical.

"Not his own," Sakura explained curtly before Naruto interrupted.

"I have to go to the bathroom," he inserted abruptly, grabbing hold of the bedside railing to pull himself up to sit at the edge of his bed.

"Wait, Naruto – your IV," Tsunade reminded while she moved around toward the other side of his bed to address the machine connected to both Naruto and the wall.

"So – it's Kyuubi's chakra, then," Sasuke concluded, earning a stiff, sober nod from his pink haired teammate. Naruto appeared aggravated, watching Tsunade and waiting impatiently while she approached the machine and tinkered with the buttons.

"Yeah."

"How?" Sasuke questioned more toward Tsunade and Kakashi than Sakura. "And why now? Hasn't it always been there?"

"Not like this."

"I have to go right now," Naruto determined while he stood, yanking free the IV in his hand.

" _Naruto –!_ " Tsunade complained, quickly stopping the flow of the fluid inside while Naruto headed for the bathroom.

"You can just do a new one later," he justified easily before closing the door shut behind himself while Tsunade stared, somewhat stunned, at the door after he closed it.

"Hey – Sherlock and Watson," Kakashi began with a nod at Sakura and Sasuke, "take the investigation to the flat."

Sakura looked genuinely apologetic but Sasuke seemed unfazed; upsetting Naruto came more naturally to him.

"Sorry, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura apologized under her breath, eyes directed regretfully at the bathroom door.

oOoOo

Inside the bathroom, Naruto stood before the sink, staring critically at himself in the mirror while he searched for any indication Kyuubi was about to take control of him. He felt like he was just waiting for the moment it would happen.

In truth, he didn't need to use the bathroom – he'd been badly dehydrated since before coming to the hospital, but he had to get out of the room because he couldn't listen to Sasuke and Sakura come to the conclusion that Tsunade had – that Naruto was pretty much screwed until Jiraiya got here.

And after that – who knows what? The thought made him sick with anxiety and unease – or maybe that was just the feeling of actual vomit making its way to his mouth. He quickly turned toward the toilet and threw up in it.

Tsunade didn't bother knocking before letting herself into the bathroom to check on him, and for some reason it made him feel more aggravated than it should have.

"Are you still feeling nauseas?" she asked while Naruto clung firmly to the toilet seat in an attempt to rein in his unexplainable anger.

"Leave me alone," he breathed so quietly, he wasn't sure Tsunade even heard him. "Just – everyone leave me _alone_."

"I have something else we can try for that nausea," she responded patiently, holding up a capped syringe in one hand, "but I need to put in a new IV first," she finished, flashing the sealed IV kit in her other hand.

Naruto tried to remember that if he was feeling anger, it probably wasn't his. But it was difficult to think a single thought that didn't somehow infuriate him – until his eyes landed on his hands where he clenched the toilet seat tightly and he noticed the claws growing out his nail beds, driving a deep pang of fear and unease through his gut that easily overpowered whatever aggravation he was feeling.

With panic in his features, he turned to look at Tsunade who was already watching him closely.

"What's the matter, brat?"

But when Naruto looked again at his hands, they seemed quite ordinary, and he wondered if he was seeing things, or if Kyuubi's chakra had simply retreated some.

"Nothing."

"Can I get started on that IV?"

Naruto stared at his hands like they didn't belong to him for another brief moment before responding. "Fine."

Without waiting for Naruto to change his mind, Tsunade got to work, rubbing a patch of skin with an alcohol swab before she lined the needle up against a vein close to the surface of his skin.

"When is Ero-sennin getting here?" Naruto asked while Tsunade slipped the needle through his skin and into his vein.

"Before you know it," she reassured, pulling the needle free once the rubber tip of the IV was properly placed and taped down.

"What time is it now?"

"A little after eight."

"In the morning?"

Tsunade could hear his anxiety and gave him a secure pat on the shoulder when she finished administering his nausea medication and flushed the line. "He'll be here soon."

"What if it's not soon enough?"

"Soon enough for what?"

Her ignorance seemed to frustrate him. "Soon enough to stop Kyuubi from getting out."

Tsunade responded with an empathetic look at first. "I know this is all giving you a good scare, but that's the last thing you should worry about."

"It's the only thing I worry about, all the time."

For a brief moment, Tsunade was at a loss for words; it was sometimes easy to forget the weight of the burden Naruto carried – and at too young an age to be emotionally equipped for it.

"What're you gonna do?" Naruto pressed on.

"Do about what?"

"What're you gonna do if the seal breaks and Ero-sennin is too late?" Naruto explained impatiently. "What're you gonna do?"

Tsunade clicked her tongue sympathetically. "Is that what you think is happening?" she clarified gently. "That the seal's failing?"

"What else would it be?"

"Whatever's going on – it's just a temporary setback," Tsunade answered evasively. "I know it's difficult for you to have perspective, being so close to the problem, but Kyuubi's not going anywhere."

Naruto didn't look like he had an argument, but he didn't look totally convinced either. "I hope you're right."

"I'm always right – it's why they made me Hokage," Tsunade teased with a grin, holding one of her hands out for Naruto. "Are you feeling better yet?"

"Yeah, I guess."

Naruto grabbed the hand extended toward him and Tsunade helped pull him to his unsteady feet before leading him back to his hospital bed so she could reconnect the IV beside it.

Naruto avoided any eye contact with his teammates, unwilling to see whatever aversion sat quietly inside their eyes. They acted casual now to his face, but Naruto had sharp ears and he knew what people really felt toward him. He knew Kyuubi instilled fear in even the most seasoned ninja – if someone offered Naruto himself the opportunity to get as far away from Kyuubi as possible, he'd take it in a hot minute.

Sakura wheeled over a small vitals cart, pulling out the thermometer and sticking a plastic shell over it before putting it in front of Naruto's mouth.

"Sakura's taking your vitals," Tsunade explained while Naruto hesitantly opened his mouth so Sakura could stick the thermometer under his tongue.

She placed her palm against his forehead and then his cheeks while the thermometer took a reading, her gaze growing more concerned at the heat that assaulted her palms. The thermometer beeped and she took down the reading from it before getting his blood pressure and a measure of his heart rate. Every thing she did was as gentle as if she were working on something made of delicate glass – something precious that might break any second – and the gesture reassured Naruto some.

She assessed his condition with Tsunade and within the next fifteen minutes, there was a bag of Tylenol hanging next to the saline drip already hung on his IV pole.

Sasuke watched Naruto who watched the clock like time refused to move forward. It seemed, to him, that this day wouldn't ever end.

"Hey, Naruto," Sasuke began, shaking the blonde from his thoughts and earning his gaze in acknowledgement, "want to pass the time with a card game?"

"What game?" Naruto asked carefully.

"Two-ten-jack?"

"No way – I'm not playing any kind of game where you can count cards."

"So basically nothing with a regular deck of cards," Sasuke clarified dryly.

"Don't be a bad sport, Naruto," Kakashi interjected, earning a sour glance from his blonde student.

"I'm not," he insisted. "I lost all my money last time we played two-ten-jack."

"I didn't even cheat," Sasuke disclosed casually. "He just sucks at cards."

"You took his money?" Sakura reprimanded, turning on Sasuke unhappily.

"He was dumb enough to bet me in the first place," Sasuke defended casually, "and he learned a good lesson about gambling."

"How 'bout some menko?" Kakashi proposed before Sasuke and Naruto's conversation could snowball into an argument. "I saw a deck at the gift shop."

A greater part of the morning and afternoon, team seven passed the time with their smallest counterpart, playing a variation of card and board games to keep him distracted from watching the time. Naruto was easily distracted – or highly inclined to let himself become so – because he didn't want to think of the alternative, which was Kyuubi taking control of his body and hurting someone.

Tsunade kept him on medications around the clock to keep him comfortable, some of which that made Naruto's skin itch – an itch so deep it seemed unreachable.

"Naruto _stop!_ " Sakura nearly yelled when she noticed what he'd done to himself; he looked at his hand, noticed the blood on his fingertips before he looked to his arm where he'd been scratching himself, several deep, angry abrasions left behind from the razor-sharp claws growing out of his nail beds.

"My hands –" he mentioned uneasily, eyes darting for Tsunade and looking for help.

Tsunade looked back at him and froze for a moment, her eyes connecting with his dark, red ones and she focused on not letting her surprise show in her features.

"Okay," Tsunade reassured evenly, "no big deal," she pressed on, using a glowing palm to quickly close up the cuts along his arm.

"It's not going away," Naruto panicked, shaking his hands briefly like it might loosen Kyuubi's hold on him.

"Then make it go away yourself," Tsunade encouraged, unsure how else to help him. "Concentrate and make it go away."

"I'm trying!" he insisted anxiously, but Tsunade watched while his canines grew longer and his features grew more feral.

"Try harder!" she instructed, more firmly than before while she held his shoulders and looked him closely in the eye, trying to ignore the heat of his skin beneath her hands. "How do you get yourself motivated for training? All the things that motivate you to get stronger – focus on those things."

Naruto knew she was right, and he gathered every ounce of willpower he had in an attempt to combat the chakra attempting to take over his body. He thought of all the precious people in his life – many of them standing in the very hospital room he occupied now – and he considered the possibility of putting all of them at risk if he didn't get his shit together.

"There you go," Tsunade encouraged him, giving him a gentle pat on the shoulder when the whisker marks on his cheeks shrunk back to normal and his eyes returned to blue.

Naruto took another glance at the clock on the wall and expelled all the impatience he felt in its direction.

"You're in charge," the woman continued to assure. "Kyuubi's just along for the ride."

Over the next few hours, Naruto struggled to rein in the loose chakra all over his system; it seemed more impossible with every minute that went by. Everything irritated him deeply – the bed he laid in, the walls of the room surrounding him, the people in the room with him – but nothing quite agitated him like the clock on the wall.

Jiraiya said he'd be here by nightfall, but night fell over an hour ago and the perverted old man was nowhere to be found.

Sakura watched Naruto closely, eyebrows furrowed just slightly in concern. Currently, Naruto was on a cocktail of everything that fights a fever, receiving the highest dose he could for his size, but still, his fever persisted. It must have been uncomfortable – to never have a break from the relentless heat.

She was supposed to be a medic, but she wasn't sure how to help. Naruto's case was far from conventional.

"You know, you never ate your dinner, Naruto," she remembered aloud. "I could get you something from the cafeteria – are you feeling hungry?"

Naruto didn't respond at first, just sat there quietly like he was trying not to say something mean in response.

"You know what? That's thoughtful Sakura," Kakashi answered before Naruto could. "Why don't you go pick something out?"

Sakura nodded slowly, shooting Naruto an apologetic look on her way out the door. Kakashi looked down upon Naruto who did an excellent job of ignoring him.

"I don't _want_ anything," Naruto grit out between his teeth, tightly clenched, canines more prominent than ever and gaze still directed away from the man hovering nearby.

"It doesn't matter," Kakashi reminded him firmly. "Two days ago you were more than happy to get lunch from Sakura."

Naruto responded with a frustrated noise and made a hand seal, but before he could make another, Kakashi grabbed the wrist of the hand closest to him and yanked it out of reach from the other which Tsunade grabbed ahold of.

"Don't even think about it, brat!" Tsunade nearly yelled.

"Try and make me!"

"Naruto, you need to calm down," Tsunade reminded him lowly, but he either wasn't listening or didn't care what she had to say while he struggled against them.

"He's so warm, Tsunade-sama," Kakashi mentioned, remembering last night and struggling to get Naruto in the tub.

"I'm not delirious or feverish – I'm pissed off!" Naruto interjected, knowing what Kakashi meant and infuriated with the insinuation.

"Knock it off, Naruto," Tsunade warned firmly. "Right now."

"Or what?" he shot back fearlessly; she dropped a pair of restraints on his bed and he struggled as vehemently as ever, unable to rein in Kyuubi's fury.

He tried to wrestle himself free, but she was an experienced medic who had put much stronger ninja than Naruto in restraints before, and in just a short moment, he had the leather restraints strapped around his wrists firmly and was unable to move his arms much further than the few inches he got between his body and the bedrails on either side of him.

"Shizune!" Tsunade called while Naruto yanked and strained against his bonds. "Please bring me a couple ice packs – medications aren't doing jack for his fever."

The young woman nodded and hurried off to comply while Naruto kept working at the leather on his wrists. The heat was unimaginable. It screwed with his head after so many hours of wrestling with it; he felt like he couldn't even hold on to even the most basic details – details that shouldn't be difficult to remember – like why he was so angry.

He felt like he was quickly going crazy.

Shizune rushed back into the room, bringing back several bags filled with ice, which she and Tsunade placed along his core and around his head – something that seemed to agitate him further.

"I can't believe you tied me down," he breathed between his teeth; more unnerved than just moments ago.

"That was for your own good," Tsunade reminded firmly. "And you aren't going to trick me into feeling bad about it."

" _Screw you!_ " he snapped angrily, twisting and yanking against the restraints. "Screw you and screw this bed!"

"Naruto –" Tsunade began before Naruto cut her off with a frustrated noise – like he didn't want to hear anything she had to say.

"I'll kill you!" he warned her, his voice sounding less like a frustrated twelve-year-old and more like the demon trapped inside him. "I'll kill you all! _I'll destroy everything!_ "

"Sasuke – go wait outside," Kakashi ordered quickly; Sasuke ignored the order, back plastered to the wall behind him.

Naruto spat dense, dark chakra from his mouth at the restraint around one of his wrists, and it stuck to his skin beneath the leather strap. It took only a brief moment after that for the chakra to burn through the restraint, and with an untamed shriek, he yanked his wrist free, using his newly freed hand to quickly cut the remaining restraint.

For a moment, no one moved. Tsunade knew their situation had grown significantly more delicate, and she debated the best way to smooth it all over.

"Naruto –" she tried again, but any further attempt to pacify him fell on deaf ears. Dark, red chakra spilled from his mouth more vehemently, sticking to his body wherever it could hold on and burning his skin where it was most dense. "Take a deep breath and calm down, Naruto –"

But Naruto responded with a wild, furious scream, the sound alone sending a pulse of hot chakra through the room before he turned on the person closest to him. He darted for Kakashi, attempting to strike at him several times in rapid, chaotic succession but was unable to land a hit on the silver-haired man; so he instead maneuvered behind Kakashi and managed to get on his back, looping the tubing from his nasal cannula around the man's neck and pulling it tight with a feral shriek.

Naruto was quick, but Kakashi was too, and although the blonde had done an impressive job to get this far, Kakashi had managed to slip a hand between his neck and the cannula wrapped around it so that when Naruto yanked the two ends in his hands, he couldn't deal the damage he'd intended.

Kakashi cut the plastic tubing with chakra, reaching for the boy clinging to his back and grabbing hold of him as he was thrown off balance by the unexpected slack from the line in his hands. But Naruto wrapped an arm around Kakashi's neck, holding it tight with the aid of his other arm, determined to cut off the man's oxygen supply one way or another.

Naruto clung to Kakashi firmly, but Kakashi was physically bigger and stronger, and he flipped Naruto off him, sending him to the hospital floor at his feet and kneeling down to hold him still, Tsunade joining them there to help.

"Naruto?" she queried firmly, unsure he would even be able to respond. "Can you hear me in there, brat? It's gonna be okay," she reassured, even if she wasn't so sure.

Naruto struggled fruitlessly against the pair holding him to the floor while he let out a furious, inhuman shriek – the only warning they got before he spat out thick, condensed chakra, deep purple in color, at three corners of the room – a deliberate attack on the integrity of the building and everyone in it.

But before any of them could land on their marks, they disappeared midair into the black holes Kakashi summoned before each of them, sending them hurtling into another dimension entirely.

In one swift movement, Jiraiya entered the scene, closing in on Naruto where he laid on the ground, struggling against Tsunade and slapping a handwritten seal against his forehead, which seemed to have a near immediate affect on the chakra slowly consuming his small body.

The chakra hissed and sizzled, lifting away from his skin and evaporating into thin air, leaving Naruto badly burnt and spinning from the world of pain he was in, and, although Jiraiya's seal had pushed back the worst of it, Kyuubi's chakra still boiled just beneath the surface of his skin in a hot reminder that it wasn't gone – just better contained for now.

Naruto laid, disoriented and dazed while he stared at the ceiling above, blankly stunned; his lungs felt deprived of oxygen, but his throat was so burnt and swollen where the condensed chakra touched him on its way out of his mouth that he couldn't pull in any air no matter how badly his lungs screamed for it.

Tsunade noticed he wasn't breathing – noticed his burnt and cracked lips – and she pried his mouth open to inspect inside, the burns and the swelling that came with them immediately obvious. She was already healing him, but she refocused her glowing palms to his throat, working on his more serious burns before the superficial ones all over his body. She watched Naruto fearfully, waiting for the moment he would be healed enough to finally take a breath, but his eyes were beginning to roll back and he still wasn't breathing, so she administered a firm sternal rub in an attempt to stimulate his airway when he was at the edge of consciousness.

The pain brought Naruto reeling back; he took a sharp, wheezing gasp of air and spit out a mouth full of blood upon exhaling.

His next few breaths were difficult and hardly enough to satisfy the ache in his lungs, but Tsunade was encouraging him – telling him that he was doing great and to keep breathing. So he kept going even if it was painful and challenging, all the while trying to figure out how he got on the floor in the first place.

He was sure it was Kyuubi – if ever he lost a pocket of time, he could usually thank Kyuubi for it; the only thing he could think of to be grateful for at the moment was that finally, Jiraiya was here, and if anyone could resolve what was going on, it was Jiraiya.

 **A/N:** Hey guys! I am so SO sorry for the super long wait between this chapter and the last. I've honestly been losing steam a little bit on this one. I had an initial plan for this fic that was pretty involved, but I might try and wrap it up in a chapter or two here – unless there are a bunch of you still reading who'd rather see it out. Not sure how many people are even still reading this, but if you have an opinion on where this one goes, now's the time to say it :]

Until next time!


	7. Part Seven

**Reality Bites**

 **Part Seven**

"Kakashi –" Tsunade hailed with a glance over her shoulder from where she kneeled beside Naruto.

"I'm alright," Kakashi interjected quickly, "just low on chakra."

Naruto lay still, trying to catch his breath now that Tsunade had healed the burns blocking his airway, listening to the conversation around him and wondering what had happened.

The last thing Naruto remembered was nearly losing his temper at Sakura – for being nice to him – and then coming to on the floor, covered in burns and unable to breathe because of them. He took a brief glance at what he could see of the room – confirmed that Kakashi seemed relatively okay, that Tsunade and Sasuke also appeared alright – but Sakura was nowhere to be seen and he feared the worst, resisting the urge to cry.

"What was happening here?" Jiraiya questioned abrasively, looking down sternly upon Naruto like he expected an explanation. "We've talked about that power, Naruto – you know it's not something you use lightly!"

"I wasn't –!"

"You could have hurt your teacher!" the man reminded in a chastising tone; Naruto looked like he was holding back tears. "Or your _teammate!_ "

" _Jiraiya!_ " Tsunade interjected unhappily; Naruto hid his eyes with his hand and let out a scared and frustrated sob. "That's not what's going on!"

Jiraiya was quickly flooded with regret and guilt when he realized that he'd jumped to the wrong conclusion; he'd been training Naruto for several months now, and so far he'd never been able to make the kid cry – no matter what he said to him – and Jiraiya had _tried_. Trying to discourage Naruto usually only had the opposite effect; his hard shell was one of his greatest assets and one of the reasons Jiraiya most loved training him.

So whatever was going on, it must have been serious, because it seemed it shook Naruto hard.

"Naruto –"

" _I'm sorry_ ," Naruto choked between suppressed sobs.

"Oh – shit, no _I'm_ sorry, kid," Jiraiya corrected apologetically with a gentle hand grasping his shoulder where there seemed to be no burns. "I just assumed – which was really unfair."

"You really put your foot in your mouth," Tsunade reiterated unforgivingly; Jiraiya didn't argue because he wasn't disagreeing with her.

"Did –" Naruto stopped to gather himself a little and try again. "Did I hurt Sakura-chan?"

Jiraiya wasn't actually sure – he looked up at Tsunade for help, but it was Kakashi who answered before anyone else could.

"Everyone's just fine," the silver-haired man reassured gently. "Sakura just left to find you something to eat – you remember that?"

Naruto took a second to think about it and nodded – it was the last thing he remembered. "And then what?"

"Then you tried to get up and ended up on the floor – which was when Jiraiya-sama got here," Kakashi lied evenly.

Naruto looked skeptical, wanting to believe it but unsure it was as convenient as Kakashi made it sound. "Then how'd I get so many burns?" he asked. "And how'd you use all your chakra?"

"Kyuubi's chakra burned you, and I used my chakra trying to stop it."

Naruto absorbed the information with uncertainty; he had so many questions – but he also feared hearing the answers to many of them, so they all died on his tongue, trapped and left to churn around inside of his head.

Jiraiya watched the exchange, curious about what was happening before he arrived.

"Alright – bring me up to speed here," Jiraiya interjected. "Is it your seal, Naruto?"

"It's just –" he began, glancing toward his remaining visitors insecurely, "been bothering me."

"How?" the man pressed on. "Can you describe it?"

Naruto seemed to take a deep, frustrated breath while he tried to find the words to both explain everything that was happening and reveal nothing to his teammate or teacher.

"Why don't we give you two some privacy?" Tsunade offered, spotting Naruto's discomfort from where she kneeled beside him on the floor, closing up the last of his burns while Naruto responded with a look that spoke of how grateful he was for her suggestion.

When Tsunade was satisfied with the state of his skin, she helped Naruto back into his bed before ushering Kakashi and Sasuke out of the room with her, shooting one last glance over her shoulder at the pair left alone in the room.

"Is Kakashi-sensei lying to me?" Naruto asked when the door slid shut behind his exiting visitors.

"I dunno, kid," Jiraiya admitted simply. "I really did just get here."

"I think he's lying to me," the boy pressed on.

"What makes you think that?"

Naruto responded by grabbing one of the snapped restraints still fastened to the bedrails and held it up as far as it would go to show Jiraiya. "I think something happened and he's lying to spare my feelings."

"Then you should rest assured that even if something _did_ happen, Kakashi doesn't hold you accountable," the man rationalized easily while Naruto dropped the restraint, gaze shifting away in thought. "Otherwise he'd have no problem laying the blame on you for whatever hypothetical thing you think happened."

Naruto inspected his hands as he twisted and wrung his fingers quietly, absorbing everything Jiraiya said; he understood the logic, but the guilt in his stomach wouldn't allow him to so easily wipe clear his conscience.

"So can you tell me a little more about what's going on?"

Naruto looked up in acknowledgement and the room swayed deeply around him; with a heavy hand, he covered his eyes in an attempt to ease the nausea the feeling stirred in his gut.

"You alright?"

"Just – feeling dizzy for some reason," Naruto admitted lowly.

Jiraiya peeled off the paper stuck to Naruto's forehead, watching closely to ensure it was safe to do so. "It's this suppression seal – it's not ideal to have it on much longer than necessary."

"What's it do?"

"Essentially, it depletes all the active chakra in your system – yours _and_ Kyuubi's. It won't affect your reserves unless we leave it on. That dizzy feeling – that's a sign to take it off."

Naruto nodded, feeling reassured that at least Jiraiya had the tools to manage Kyuubi's chakra should it try again to take control of him.

"Naruto," Jiraiya began again seriously, "I want you to tell me everything that's happened in the last few days. Anything that could be related to the seal – I need to know it all."

oOoOo

Sasuke had always been an unusually sharp kid – maybe not for an Uchiha, but among his peers his own age, he was usually always the smartest.

So while most kids overlooked the peculiarity of an unruly, unsupervised six-year-old running about the village, Sasuke felt ensnared with curiosity over the intrigue surrounding Uzumaki Naruto; so curious, that many times, instead of playing with other children his age vying for his attention, he sat somewhere just out of plain sight – this time the roof of the play structure – to observe the blonde and the maelstrom of trouble that usually followed him.

Naruto sat quietly in the seat of one of the swings, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet but never really kicking off and swinging much further than that.

For a quarter of an hour, they remained like that – Naruto swinging slowly, gaze directed at the sand below his feet while Sasuke watched quietly from where he hid atop the playground – until a pair of boys his and Naruto's age entered the park, two young ninja probably Itachi's age close behind supervising.

Sasuke watched while the two boys closed in on Naruto, in spite of the seemingly empty play structure behind them; he could tell already that they were looking to start trouble.

"What d'you think you're doing here?" the taller of the two boys antagonized while they closed in on the younger blonde.

"I'm swinging," Naruto mentioned casually. "Thought it was obvious."

"Shut your smart mouth," the stockier one warned unhappily.

"Yeah, shut it," the taller agreed. "And quit hogging the swing."

"No one's been here all day."

"Well we're here now," the taller boy justified simply, "so you should leave."

"Why don't you make me?" Naruto offered fearlessly; beyond that, he hardly acknowledged either of them.

The stockier boy responded by grabbing the back of Naruto's shirt to yank him backwards off the swing, sending him crashing to the sandpit below with a thud. Before he could recover, the two boys pinned him down roughly so he couldn't get away.

"No one wants you here!" the taller one yelled; it was something Naruto heard a lot – something that never seemed to get easier to hear.

"Just let me go!" Naruto yelled back, struggling fruitlessly against the boys holding him down.

"Why don't you make me?" the stocky boy mimicked callously; Naruto felt the unease of being trapped, and he used the adrenalin it gave him to wriggle free one of his hands, taking a handful of sand and throwing it toward the faces above, blinding them both in one, even toss.

The boys above him reeled back to wipe the sand from their eyes, and Naruto took the opportunity to struggle the rest of the way free, taking off for the park exit – but before he could make it to the street, he was intercepted by the two ninja supervising the boys he'd thrown sand at, and he knew by the unpleasant looks in their eyes, that he wouldn't get off easy for what he'd done.

They dragged him out of plain sight, behind an old garden shed where any park maintenance equipment would be held, close to the forest bordering the park. Sasuke was well practiced at listening to his gut, and right now, it was telling him to get Itachi, because even _he_ knew that two older shinobi who had no qualms about beating the crap out of a six-year-old with no ninja training would probably also have no mercy for the other untrained six-year-old coming to his defense.

By the time he returned with Itachi, the boys in the park were gone, and probably so were the two ninja supervising them.

"What'd you want me to see, Sasuke?" Itachi asked tiredly, only half-convinced this wasn't some sort of trick of Sasuke's to get his older brother on the playground with him.

"Behind the shed, nii-san," Sasuke corrected, turning and giving Itachi an urgent wave to tell him to follow. "C'mon!"

Sasuke knew he'd probably see something unpleasant – maybe a bloody nose or the start of a black eye, but what he didn't expect was to find Naruto on the ground beside the shed with a kunai pierced through his arm just below his wrist, the sharp end driven deep into the wood of the shed at his side, effectively pinning him there.

Naruto yanked and pulled at the kunai, but he was too weak to find even a centimeter of wiggle room and he instead just held on to the handle tight with a small, shaking hand and a frustrated noise.

Itachi assessed the child on the ground carefully; he was pale and clammy – blood poured out of his wound even with the kunai still deeply imbedded in it. There was potential danger that he'd bleed out if nothing were soon done. "What'd you do, Sasuke?"

"I didn't do it!" Sasuke defended quickly. "It was some older boys your age."

Itachi felt a stab of unease. Sure, he'd killed plenty of people and injured countless more himself, but those were all trained shinobi looking to do the same to him. He didn't understand what would motivate someone his age to beat the crap out of a defenseless kid – and he was pretty sure he never wanted to. "Did you recognize any of them?"

"No," Sasuke admitted, sounding dissatisfied with himself.

"Were any of them Uchiha?"

"Of course not."

Naruto turned to acknowledge the two boys talking about him, his features feral and mistrusting like he was hoping to scare them off without a fight. Itachi looked over his young face – noticed the whisker marks adorning each cheek – and suddenly all of this made a whole lot more sense.

"Don't move so much," Itachi warned, watching the blood pour out of the wound with every small movement the child made; but Naruto looked more worried about the two people closing in on him than the knife impaling his arm – Itachi knew, at this moment, Naruto saw them as a greater threat.

" _Get away from me!_ " the boy warned, trying to sound intimidating but only sounding frightened.

"Can I help you get that out?" Itachi asked gently with a nod toward the kunai pinning him to the shed.

"Why?" Naruto bit back distrustfully; Itachi didn't blame him for his cynicism given his current position.

"So I can get you to the hospital."

Naruto responded with an unconvinced noise, growing defensive once again when Itachi approached him.

"I said get away!" the child reminded, tense and panicked.

Itachi pulled the kunai free and tried to grasp the child's uninjured arm to steady him; but before he could grab hold, Naruto smacked the hand away, sidestepping from the momentum of his own defensive maneuver before he lost balance, falling to his knees.

Itachi reached out once more and was again rejected, the fear in Naruto's features preventing him from trying a third time.

"Seriously, I'm just trying to help."

"I'm not dumb." Naruto scooted a little further away before trying, again, to get to his feet.

Itachi had to hand it to the kid – he was tough – but even the toughest ninja couldn't ignore the effects of extensive blood loss, and he knew he just had to wait Naruto out.

His final attempt to stand up was the last that his blood-deprived brain could offer, and he passed out cold on his feet; Itachi caught his limp body before it could crash against the forest floor, readjusting the small boy in his arms so he could both carry Naruto and apply pressure to his freely bleeding wound – it wasn't difficult. Naruto couldn't weigh more than thirty-five pounds.

"Go home, Sasuke."

And with that, Itachi disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving behind only a handful of leaves gliding through the air where he once stood.

Sasuke waited at home for the next half an hour impatiently, sitting upon the front porch and finally lunging from it when he spotted his brother approaching from down the street.

"Nii-san!" Sasuke greeted, running to the edge of the property to meet Itachi there. "What happened? Is he okay?"

"Medical ninja are amazing, Sasuke. He'll be fine."

Sasuke seemed dissatisfied with the response.

"Okay, but aren't shinobi supposed to leave villagers alone?" Sasuke pressed on while he followed Itachi to the porch and through the front door. "Why did that happen?"

"It's a really complicated situation."

"It doesn't seem complicated to me."

"What're you two talking about?" Mikoto interjected happily while she emerged from the kitchen where the smell of dinner came from to greet her sons.

"The boy with the whiskers on his face," Sasuke answered swiftly.

Itachi looked irritated, preferring to leave it at the door; Mikoto responded with patience, saying nothing.

"Why are people always mean to him?" Sasuke pressed on boldly.

"People fear what they don't know," Mikoto explained delicately.

"Yeah but he's six," Sasuke rationalized simply. "What's so scary about that?"

"Y'know, sometimes _you're_ scary, Sasuke-kun," Mikoto redirected. "For instance, when I have to wake you up in the morning."

"Nuh-uh," Sasuke argued.

"Yes-huh, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke responded by poking out his tongue in dispute.

"Sasuke?"

" _Sasuke?_ "

Sasuke shook himself from his thoughts, bringing himself back to the hospital hallway he walked down when he realized someone had been trying to speak to him.

"Are you listening, Sasuke?" Kakashi asked impatiently.

"No," the brunette offered honestly.

"What are you so lost in thought about?"

"I was remembering something."

"Fine – listen, what happened up there – that should stay between the three of us that were in there."

"So you don't want me to tell Sakura," Sasuke assumed.

"I don't want you to tell Naruto," Kakashi revised firmly. "Naruto can never know what happened. The guilt would kill him."

Sasuke let the air in his lungs out in a deep sigh and nodded.

"I won't say anything."

 **A/N:** Oh my gosh, I don't even know how to start thanking everyone who responded last week with all the encouragement to press on with the original plot for this story. I felt so touched and motivated by all the support: I'll do my best to stick to the original plot. Thanks for reading :] until next time.


	8. Part Eight

**Reality Bites**

 **Part Eight**

Jiraiya sat in the silence of his study, going over every detail of what he knew about Naruto's seal and reevaluating everything the kid told him about the effect the seal had on him over the past few days, but, so far, none of it really made sense. It seemed out of nowhere that Kyuubi's chakra so violently attacked its host – and he had yet to find anything that would explain what would be causing it.

"Jiraiya!" Tsunade yelled while she threw open the door to the study loudly, startling the man inside.

"Damn it, woman!" the man complained at her abrupt entrance, clutching his chest where his heart raced from being startled. "Are you _trying_ to kill me? As if Naruto isn't enough of a challenge for you without my help."

"That's what I'm here about. What have you figured out?"

Jiraiya took a moment to put off giving her news she would hate, flipping through a page of one of the many books littering the surface of his desk. "A last-ditch stopgap if we end up facing our worst-case scenario."

"What does that mean, Jiraiya?" Tsunade demanded impatiently. "You're not giving me anything."

"Because I don't have anything!" Jiraiya admitted, sounding as frustrated as he felt. "Every seal I know and everything I've researched would stop the flow of Kyuubi's chakra – but it would stop Naruto's too, which is totally useless and incredibly painful, so that's a temporary solution at best."

"Well _think harder_ Jiraiya!" Tsunade insisted desperately. " _Figure something out!_ "

"No problem, Tsunade! Let me just check my _huge_ reference of every person who's ever had this type of seal before," the white haired man snapped back unhappily, eyes never leaving the texts laid out before him.

"Look, I know you're in a difficult position with no literature or personal experience to reference. He's just–" Tsunade started again apologetically, feeling helpless and letting it show. "He's not doing so great."

"I know," Jiraiya reassured sympathetically. "But there's a reason successfully executing this seal comes at such a steep cost, and adjusting it is just as difficult – and risky."

"Well you might have to seal off his and Kyuubi's chakras until you figure something else out because with the way he's progressing now, Kyuubi will kill him if we do nothing in the next forty-eight hours – maybe sooner."

"Give me thirty-six of those, and if I find nothing, I'll seal it all off until I can find something more practical."

"Twenty-four, Jiraiya," Tsunade compromised uneasily. "Given he doesn't get any worse."

"Fine," the man consented without turning to look at her. "Now get out of my hair so I can focus on this."

Tsunade responded by leaving without argument; it was probably about time to check in on Naruto anyway.

oOoOo

Dinner had been a spectacularly uneventful time in the aftermath of everything Sasuke saw just before; Sakura was as perky as ever – unaware of the weight of the thoughts on either of the people sitting at the cafeteria table with her.

Kakashi finished before either of his students and stood, grabbing what they'd picked out for Naruto's dinner to exit with something incomprehensible as his excuse for leaving and Sakura watched him go, somewhat perplexed.

"Kakashi-sensei was quiet – more than normal, I mean," Sakura mentioned while she set her utensils down. "I wonder what he was thinking about."

"Maybe you're better off not knowing."

"Why?" Sakura pressed on. "What's that mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like," Sasuke reestablished while he, too, stood from the table to exit the cafeteria.

"Did something happen after I left?" Sakura assumed simply, standing to trail Sasuke to the garbage near the cafeteria exit where he emptied his garbage into the bin and stacked his tray in the bus tub above it, Sakura following suit. "I mean, one minute, Kakashi-sensei asked me to bring back dinner, and the next, you're both down here, too –"

"Jiraiya's here," Sasuke interrupted evasively, hoping it was enough to shut her up.

" _Oh!_ " Sakura acknowledged, more cheerfully than before. "Well that's good news, right? I bet Naruto's seal will be back in order by the time we get back."

"Yeah, I doubt it."

"Pessimist," Sakura deemed lowly between her teeth. "Naruto would have agreed with me."

Before Sasuke had a chance to respond, a familiar face cornered the pair of them, and Sakura was too friendly to blow off any of their age-mates like Sasuke was willing to.

"Hey! Team seven!" Kiba barked from down the hall before catching up to them. "Team seven, minus one." Kiba looked at each of them, a finger pointing back and forth between the two of them. "Where's Naruto?"

"Where do you think, idiot?" Sasuke snapped, earning a backhanded smack near his shoulder from his pink-haired teammate.

"Naruto's sick," Sakura rephrased more gently. "We're here visiting."

"Wow, so he's _really_ sick then," Kiba assumed more seriously.

"It's not your concern," Sasuke interjected.

" _Sasuke-kun_ –" Sakura complained unhappily.

" _What?_ " Sasuke complained back. "Naruto wouldn't want everyone to know his business."

"Well, we aren't his only friends," Sakura reminded him. "Kiba's allowed to ask how he's doing."

Sasuke responded with an irritated noise before leaving the area, heading back for Naruto's room to avoid whatever conversation they were about to have.

When Sasuke first arrived in the hallway leading to Naruto's room, he could see Kakashi just outside Naruto's door, listening to Shizune and Tsunade as they spoke quickly and quietly to each other at the nurses' station several yards down the hall from Naruto's room. Sasuke walked right up to Naruto's door, and none of them seemed bothered enough to stop him while he walked by, so he entered without any hesitation.

At first glance inside the room, Naruto looked unnerved and frightened, but upon catching Sasuke's gaze, so quickly gathered himself, Sasuke wondered if he actually saw anything in the first place or if he was simply projecting his own fears directly onto Naruto.

On the bedside table was the styrofoam box containing the dinner Sakura had picked for him, but it didn't seem Naruto showed much interest in it yet.

Naruto waited to see if his pink-haired teammate was with Sasuke. Everyone kept telling him Sakura was fine – that he didn't hurt anyone – but he'd rather see it with his own eyes. "Where's Sakura-chan?" he finally asked when she didn't enter after Sasuke.

"Spreading your business around the whole hospital."

" _What?_ " Naruto asked quickly. "What the hell does _that_ mean?"

"Kiba saw us leaving the cafeteria."

"So – _what_ , he knows why I'm here now?"

"Don't get mad at me," Sasuke defended quickly. "I'm just the messenger who tried to stop her."

Naruto responded with an irritated noise while he flung himself back into his hospital cot, arms crossed over his chest while he stared crossly at the wall opposite from him.

"I don't want anyone here – not even _you_." He said it like it was supposed to be an insult, but what it meant was, if he _had_ to choose someone to be here with him, he'd probably pick Sasuke.

"Well you better change your attitude, because you might have other visitors tomorrow," Sasuke shrugged, sitting at the chair closest to Naruto's cot and getting comfortable. "So what's going on with your seal?"

" _What?_ " Naruto looked taken aback – like he was a little surprised Sasuke would even ask, let alone so straightforwardly. "Don't ask me about that."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't wanna talk about it."

"You really shouldn't bottle things up," Sasuke added unhelpfully.

"No one's telling me anything so it's not like I have anything to tell you anyway."

Sasuke nodded slowly in thought, gaze directed at nothing in particular before he grabbed the deck of menko cards at the bedside table, holding them up for Naruto to see. "Want to just play cards until you're ready to go to bed and try to forget about it?"

Naruto felt a surge of gratitude that Sasuke was willing to drop it that easily. "Yeah, fine," he conceded while Sasuke pulled the rubber band from the thick cards of the small menko deck. "Thanks, Sasuke."

 **A/N:** This part really could have gone with the last chapter or along with the next, but the next chapter has so much going on right now that a short update before that post seemed like the best option. Plus it gives those of you still reading at least something to read while I finish up the next part. As usual, thanks to all those reading/following/favoriting and thanks twice to those who take time to review! You fuel my muse more than you know! :]


	9. Part Nine

**Reality Bites**

 **Part Nine**

Naruto woke in the large hall before Kyuubi's cage, lying beside the great, metal bars that held back the immense mass of angry chakra that was Kyuubi – and he wondered what could have happened; there were usually bad implications for unconsciously waking up here.

He lay on the tile floor amongst only an inch or two of mercilessly hot water; he couldn't move well, so he remained where he was, the muscles beneath his skin feeling heavy, as if his bones were suddenly made out of rock or metal.

"God damn fox," he spat out with difficulty, gaze shifting toward the large prison bars beside him.

" _You are pathetic – even for a human_ ," the trapped animal spat back, the anger in his voice feeling hot as the air assaulting Naruto's skin. " _This seal is easier to manipulate than I thought it'd be_."

"What're you trying to do?" Naruto asked breathlessly; the heat was unimaginable – he felt like he would choke on it.

" _You don't understand, do you?_ " Kyuubi growled casually.

Naruto stared back, calculating and quiet; he knew a rhetorical question when he heard one, and he possessed too much pride to humor a demon.

" _Sooner or later, I_ will _break free and when I do, I will reduce this pathetic collection of humans you call a village into a smoldering pile of ash,"_ the voice rumbled angrily. " _And I'll have every shinobi's head on a steak!_ "

Naruto debated if there was any weight to Kyuubi's words; the seal was designed to kill them both before Kyuubi could escape should he somehow manage it one day, but Kyuubi _was_ a bijuu, after all. What if, in the twelve years he'd been trapped inside Naruto, he'd found some sort of loophole? The idea wasn't completely outlandish when considering just who his prisoner was. "Please don't," Naruto begged helplessly.

"' _Please don't?' Is that your best attempt to pacify the angry demon who's condemned your village?_ "

Naruto lay there, wracking his brain for something better, but coming up short. "I have nothing to bargain with."

" _You've one thing_ ," Kyuubi reminded him coyly. " _And if you did this one thing, I'd spare the life of every villager here. I'd even spare the shinobi, which – you can understand – would be an altruistic risk on my end. It would all be as easy as –_ "

"Peeling off that paper seal?" Naruto interjected simply; Kyuubi growled a rumbling warning. "Yeah right," he denied effortlessly, drawing out a deep, hot anger from the monster inside him.

" _I'll be sure to kill you first!_ "

"You'll just kill us both."

" _I've lived for thousands of years before you ever existed,_ " Kyuubi hissed back while dark, hot chakra seeped through the bars to slowly consume Naruto, " _and I'll be around long after you're gone._ "

All Naruto could feel was the heat – so white-hot, it blinded his eyes and dulled his hearing with the sound of blood rushing loudly in his ears. He tried calling out for help – not that anyone would hear him – but found he had no control over his body, over encumbered by the chakra crammed mercilessly into his system.

All he could do was lay there, ride it out, and hope Kyuubi was only lying about his capacity to escape with his life.

oOoOo

"Naruto," Tsunade called stiffly, patting gently at his whiskered cheek and hoping to earn the attention of his glassy, unseeing gaze.

At first, it seemed the paper seal Jiraiya used last night had fixed everything. For a while, Naruto seemed more normal than he had in several days, but Tsunade soon learned that the effect was brief, and within several hours, it seemed he was right back where he started, fighting a raging, untamable fever by the early hours of the morning. She'd spent the last several hours using every method she knew to take down a fever – so far, none to any effect, including Jiraiya's paper seal.

"Look at me, you brat."

Tsunade watched him closely, waiting for some type of acknowledgement but earning none; Naruto was in a bad way – he lay there, staring forward blankly into an abyss none of them could see while he swallowed compulsively, like there was a bad taste in his mouth that wouldn't go away.

"Shizune! Bring more ice!" Tsunade requested, seeing the warning signs and fearing the worst; Shizune took off, hurrying through the door and Tsunade watched her go, briefly noticing Sasuke and Kakashi in the hallway near the door, moving to get out of her way. "It's not a good time for visitors," she informed stiffly while she returned her attention on her patient.

Sasuke looked prepared to enter anyway, but Kakashi held him back with a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Why don't we wait here for now?" the man suggested lowly.

Sasuke looked back at Kakashi from over his shoulder, eyebrows furrowed in aversion, but before he could respond, the monitors tracking Naruto's vitals began to complain loudly – a noise that carried through the doorway and down the hall.

Sasuke shook off Kakashi's hand and leaned around the frame of the door to peer into the hospital room, watching Tsunade pull Naruto onto his side while stiff and forceful convulsions tore through his small body. But the moment was brief before Kakashi quickly pulled him out of the way as Shizune came running, darting back into the room to help, hands filled with bags of ice.

In the moments that followed, several medics rushed down the halls, pouring into the room to offer assistance, and Sasuke felt like he was in the way even as he pressed himself against the wall near the door to avoid blocking it; from inside, Tsunade barked out orders, directing medics here and there and delegating each to a specific task.

Sasuke caught Kakashi's eye for a brief moment, and he held the man's gaze; he felt there was a deep pit in his stomach – something foreign that that made him anxious and afraid for his teammate. "What's happening to him?"

But Kakashi either didn't know or wouldn't say it, offering a gentle pat on the head that made Sasuke feel more like a child than he had in a while. "Naruto will be okay."

"Will he?" Sasuke pressed on doubtfully. "How can you be so sure?"

"Tsunade-sama is the best medic in any of the five hidden villages," the man insisted. "And few can rival Jiraiya-sama's knowledge of seals. With two Sannin on his side, Naruto can't lose."

His words were of total confidence, but Sasuke didn't feel reassured. The voices floating out of the hospital room beside him were full of restrained distress, and it easily drove away any comfort he could have received from Kakashi.

Inside the room, Tsunade watched while the convulsions assaulting Naruto's body slowed to a hard shudder, leaving his muscles rigid and quivering in the aftermath. All in all, it'd probably been less than thirty seconds since her young patient crumbled into a seizure, but to her, it felt like an eternity.

Tsunade kept him on his side, as if the worst had ended but she knew it wasn't over; he appeared still in comparison to before, but by his tonic posture and the way his feet kept going, toes clenching and unclenching rigidly against the bottom of his feet, she could tell Naruto wasn't totally out of it yet.

It was several more tense minutes before Naruto's muscles released their forceful hold on his body; the first thing he did was reach for the handrail of his hospital bed, like he had every intention of pulling himself up, but he was weak, and unable to get far with Tsunade carefully keeping him down each time he deliriously tried to move.

"He's postictal," Tsunade announced over the noise of the medical team currently helping her; she placed a cannula beneath his nose and gently tucked the tubing behind his ears. He reached up to detangle himself from it, but Tsunade intercepted and stopped him before he could manage it.

It sounded like Naruto tried to speak, but couldn't manage much beyond a lengthy groan to communicate his misery; Tsunade gently reassured him he was okay, unsure he was even hearing her, until he finally succumbed to his exhaustion, lying there mostly still, half-lidded eyes staring blankly ahead at nothing in particular.

"Get Jiraiya," Tsunade commanded from Naruto's bedside, gaze finding Shizune. "Tell him time's up."

oOoOo

The minutes that followed after Shizune left to fetch Jiraiya were long and quiet. Naruto had come out of his seizure enough to find Tsunade's gaze for the first time in a while as she looked down upon him from above.

"Baa-chan," he breathed tiredly; speaking felt more difficult than it should have, but the woman beside him let out the air in her lungs in a sigh of relief – a sign that maybe he was doing okay. "I can't move."

"It's okay," Tsunade reassured easily. "You don't need to."

"No, I mean –" Naruto tried again weakly; he struggled to lift his arm but failed – strained to simply clench his fingers into a fist, but was unable to do even that. He wasn't simply exhausted. He felt as if pins and needles had been stuck through every joint he had just to make movement impossible. "I think something's wrong."

"Jiraiya's on his way," the woman reassured gently. "Just hang in there."

In the hallway, Sasuke heard Naruto's soft complaint – noticed that the immediate emergency had passed, and with sharingan activated, he glanced into the room again, eyes examining every inch of Naruto's chakra system with apprehension. It was no wonder Naruto couldn't move. How could anyone move with that much chakra jammed into his system? There was so much in his system, that it had invaded areas chakra didn't belong.

It was only a moment later when Kyuubi's chakra began to seep out, seemingly from every pore on Naruto's body – but unlike the thick, dense chakra he'd spat out the day before that stuck here and there to his body and burned anything it touched upon contact, this time it covered him from head to toe within seconds in a transparent cloak of red chakra, and not all the willpower in the village could have stopped it.

There was nowhere left for the chakra to go, except out.

"Where's Jiraiya?!" Tsunade yelled from inside the room, attempting to pacify Naruto but so far, unable to do much more than hold him down while Kyuubi's fury lashed out at her.

Sasuke shot a calculating glance toward his teacher, like he was mentally debating something; Kakashi noticed the sharingan in his eyes and was prepared to stop him should he try to reenter Naruto's room. But Sasuke understood well the advantages of his sharingan, so when he darted through the doorway toward his teammate, he already knew to dodge away from Kakashi's hand before the man even reached for him.

He rushed into the room, sharingan activated while he got as close as he needed to in order to catch Naruto's distant, Kyuubi-influenced gaze.

Everything after that tumbled out of his control. Sasuke's first intention had been to cast a genjutsu on Naruto. If he could do nothing else, maybe he could buy some time; Naruto's greatest weakness _was_ genjutsu, after all. But what Sasuke didn't expect was to instead find himself in a tall, flooded hallway, leading to perhaps the largest set of double-doors he'd ever seen and held shut by a single piece of paper. There wasn't enough light to see what hid behind the immense, metal bars, but it wasn't hard for Sasuke to guess what it was hiding within the darkness.

Sasuke moved closer; he could see Naruto lying close to the cage, pinned beneath a thick blanket of Kyuubi's chakra, and he hurried forward, determined to pull his ailing teammate free – the moment Sasuke's hand breached the chakra, it seemed to dissolve into thousands of tiny, sizzling bubbles, hissing and evaporating away from Naruto's prone body without much more of a fight.

Sasuke rushed to Naruto's side after that, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket and pulling him several yards away from the doors in an attempt to protect him from a second assault, all the while wondering if there was any place, really, that Naruto could hide from Kyuubi and assuming probably not.

He kneeled down beside his companion, still a little unsure what was happening, but confident he had helped some nonetheless.

"Sasuke?" Naruto breathed; he seemed as perplexed as Sasuke felt. "How – you –?"

"What is this place, Naruto?" Sasuke interrupted.

Naruto looked back at him for a stiff, uncomfortable moment. "Isn't it obvious?"

Sharp, angry claws clashed heavily against the doors confining Kyuubi, who moved closer to the light near the bars to gaze angrily upon Sasuke. " _An Uchiha_ ," Kyuubi grumbled out lowly. " _To think a mere child could find its way here – that loathsome sharingan_."

"It seems this isn't your first look upon the sharingan," Sasuke noticed arrogantly. "So even demons tremble before its power."

" _You have nerve, boy!_ " Kyuubi roared back furiously in response. " _I should kill you for your insolence!_ "

But before Sasuke could say anything in response, he felt someone else's chakra surge through him, and he was very suddenly back in the hospital room, beside Naruto's bed, sharingan still activated while Kakashi pulled his two students free from Sasuke's genjutsu – if that's what it even was.

He wasn't sure how, but Kyuubi's chakra had been pushed back – enough so that the demon's cloak had evaporated; the chakra in Naruto's system returned to close to normal, no longer attempting to blanket his skin or limit his movement by heavily invading all corners of his chakra system and then some, and Tsunade turned on Sasuke in an instant.

"What was that?" the woman demanded firmly. "What did you just do?"

"I don't know," Sasuke admitted quickly. "I was trying to cast a genjutsu on him, but I think I somehow ended up before Kyuubi's cage instead."

"Kyuubi's _cage?_ " Tsunade reiterated unsurely. "Are you sure you weren't just under Kyuubi's own genjutsu?"

"No, I think there's a place inside Naruto where he can speak to Kyuubi – or Kyuubi can speak to him – I don't know."

"Shut up, Sasuke," Naruto interjected tiredly. "That's personal."

"So it's true," Tsunade pressed on, looking to catch Naruto's eyes but so far unable. "You can communicate with Kyuubi?"

Naruto shrugged, unwilling to admit it but also unable to lie.

"Naruto, look at me," Tsunade demanded, earning a brief glance in acknowledgement from her young patient. "Do you often speak with Kyuubi?"

"Never on _purpose_ ," he answered evasively.

"What does that mean, brat?" the woman asked.

"It means it's usually when he's within an inch of his life," Jiraiya cut in while he entered the hospital room, Shizune behind him, providing the answer that Naruto either wouldn't or couldn't give her, because he might not even really know. "Kyuubi has a knack for self-preservation. In the past, when Naruto's life was in danger, unconsciously, he'd borrow Kyuubi's chakra – and Kyuubi would willingly give it. A dead host would ultimately mean Kyuubi's demise as well."

"So what's changed?" Tsunade pressed. "Why has Kyuubi suddenly turned on Naruto?"

"That's what I'm still trying to figure out."

"Kyuubi's chakra is moving through his system again," Sasuke warned, sharingan watching his teammate closely, "quicker than before."

"Then stop it!" Naruto begged to anyone who could.

"Sasuke, would you be able to revisit Kyuubi's cage?" Tsunade asked Sasuke seriously, eyes never leaving the brunette to ensure he couldn't lie to her. "Could you do it again – whatever it was that pushed back Kyuubi's chakra?"

"I –" Sasuke began uneasily. "I'm not sure."

"Do it again, right now, and I'll call Jiraiya off."

"Call him off from what?" Naruto interjected cautiously, earning no acknowledgement from either of the adults holding his fate in their palms.

Sasuke looked to his teammate, hoping for Naruto's sake that he'd succeed, but when he attempted again to find the hall to Kyuubi's seal, all he managed was to cast the genjutsu upon Naruto he'd originally intended to do moments earlier.

"It – it didn't work," Sasuke admitted, breaking the ineffective genjutsu on his teammate.

"Thanks for trying, Sasuke," the woman offered before turning to Kakashi. "Get him out of here," she ordered while Shizune supplied her with a handful of syringes – Kakashi ushered Sasuke toward the door and Naruto watched him go in unease.

"Wait –!" Naruto began, cutting himself off quickly; the last thing he ever wanted to do was call out helplessly for _Sasuke_ of all people, but so far, his sharingan had proven most effective in controlling Kyuubi's chakra, and Naruto honestly didn't want him far – even if Sasuke _was_ clueless on how to really use his bloodline.

"They won't go far," Tsunade reassured, flushing syringe after syringe into Naruto's IV who watched cautiously – suspiciously – before he let his head fall back into the pillows behind him heavily, unable to hold it up any longer.

"What're you doing?" the blonde asked, his words cluttered together from the weight of the drugs in his system. He suspected it would be something bad – medics didn't load people up with pain medications when nothing painful was going to happen. Tsunade didn't answer him, and he turned his gaze upon his perverted teacher, hoping to find honesty there.

"I'm sealing off your chakra, kid," Jiraiya supplied frankly.

" _What?_ No, no," Naruto begged quickly – desperate and unable to come up with any kind of believable excuse for why it was a bad idea. "C'mon, anything else."

"Naruto –"

"I'll just wear that seal you used yesterday."

"That's not going to work."

"Then bring Sasuke back –"

"He can't help either, kid."

"But _why?_ " the frustration and fear in his voice was as clear as it was on his young, frightened face. " _Why not?_ "

"This is our only option right now," Tsunade responded with patience.

But Naruto either didn't understand her reasoning or didn't want to, and his instinct for self-preservation kicked in full force. " _No!_ "

"Tsunade –" Jiraiya started stiffly while the woman moved to help hold Naruto down as the child gave his best shot at rebelling.

"Anything but that! _Please!_ "

"Brace yourself, Naruto."

And that was the last warning Jiraiya gave him before Naruto's world crumbled into pure agony.

 **A/N:** What do you guys think? I would love to hear your feedback if you have any. Just a few more chapters to go, now! **Next chapter,** we'll briefly explore what life would be like for Naruto without any chakra. Any ninja would hate that (except Lee, of course. I still don't really understand how he's even powerful at all). Anyway, as always, thanks so much for reading/reviewing/following/favoriting!


	10. Part Ten

**Reality Bites**

Real quick, I want to dedicate this chapter to Fandomrules16 who is going through a stressful time at the moment. I just want you to know that you're so awesome and, although we may not know each other, I'm rooting for you! And hoping that your path smooths out soon! Hope this chapter brings you a little light :]

 **Part Ten**

It was more painful than he thought it'd be – like every cell in his body had some of his chakra connected to it and Jiraiya was slowly ripping it away, bit-by-bit – he felt like he was being skinned alive.

He tried not to make a sound, but it was only a short moments before he was screaming in agony, and it felt like once he started, he couldn't stop. He screamed and writhed against the pain for all it was worth, but nothing could appease it.

It could have only been a short minute or two, but to Naruto, it felt like an eternity. All the chakra in him was gone, or at least so deeply locked away that he couldn't feel even a hint of it – his _or_ Kyuubi's – and with it went all the heat and the nausea and the discomfort it had been causing him, so that all that remained were the drugs in his system used to fight it all with. He felt both profoundly aware of his mortality, and very, _very_ high.

"You're all done," Tsunade reassured Naruto gently; she thought he was afraid of the pain Jiraiya was going to cause him, but what really scared him was the feeling he was left with after – an empty, powerless feeling that made him somehow feel both more and less human at the same time – and he simply stared back at her with all the betrayal he felt plain as day in his pinched, uncomfortable features, teetering near the edge of consciousness and determined to hold onto it while he tried hard to catch his breath.

"Rest, Naruto," Jiraiya insisted with a gentle hand grasping his shoulder; beneath his hand, he felt his student's muscles trembling and shuddering from the ordeal he'd been through and it tugged at his guilt.

Naruto turned his gaze upon his perverted teacher. "How could you do that to me?" he breathed between tightly clenched teeth; the question alone felt like a skewer through Jiraiya's heart.

"I asked him to do it," Tsunade interjected, coming to Jiraiya's aid and earning the full weight of Naruto's disbelief when he returned his gaze to the blonde woman beside him.

"Is it –" Naruto began, pausing a moment to gather himself some – like the question he wanted to ask frightened him. "Is it permanent?"

" _No_ – Naruto, of course not," Tsunade reassured quickly; Naruto appeared reassured some as he looked to Jiraiya for confirmation.

"I can take it off the moment I figure out what's going on with your seal and have a way to fix it," the man insisted.

"So you still don't know what's going on, then?"

"No, I don't," Jiraiya admitted, never the type to sugarcoat the truth. "For now, just rest," the man insisted again, to which Naruto scoffed angrily at.

"How can I?" he snapped back unhappily; he was exhausted, but didn't feel like he could sleep. "If Akatsuki came they could cut my throat and I'd never even see them coming."

"They wouldn't," Jiraiya reminded, "because they don't want you dead."

Naruto stared back at him stiffly, features unimpressed. "That _doesn't_ make me feel better."

"You really think me or Tsunade would let Akaktsuki come near you? You've come a long way, kid, but even on your best day, you're still too weak to give any one of them a challenge. This changes nothing."

"Maybe not for you."

"Sometimes, the road is rocky," Jiraiya finalized, hearing no further argument from his irritable student. "Feeling sorry for yourself won't change a thing."

Naruto made an aggravated noise, throwing himself back into his pillows to express his frustration, arms crossed. "I _know_ , okay?" He wouldn't say it out loud, but it felt like the road was _always_ rocky.

"Keep your head up, kid," Jiraiya offered with a firm squeeze at the small shoulder beneath his hand. "I'll figure out what's going on and you'll be back to training before you know it."

" _Back_ to training? So I can't even train right now?"

"What the hell do you think you're going to do with no chakra?" Tsunade interjected incredulously. "Of course you're not training!"

"I can do tons of stuff without chakra," the whiskered boy tried to argue, but neither of the adults on either side of him looked convinced, and he blew a raspberry at them to convey his discord. " _Fine!_ I'll sit around and get terrible!"

Jiraiya snapped his fingers in appreciation at Naruto, offering a smile in response. "Get some rest while you're at it."

Naruto bit his tongue but didn't have any intention of getting any rest like Jiraiya insisted – he felt overwhelmed with the anxiety it gave him to not have chakra.

Tsunade watched Naruto fight off the sleep he so desperately needed and released a great sigh at his tenacity. "Sleep, brat," she demanded, two fingers glowing green at the tips where they tapped Naruto's forehead, knocking him deeply unconscious upon contact.

oOoOo

Outside in the hall, Kakashi tried directing Sasuke down the hall before Tsunade and Jiraiya got started, but they were quicker than he was, and by the time Sasuke heard Naruto's suffering, it was impossible to move him much further than right outside the door – especially once Sakura came hustling down the hallway looking as worried as Sasuke and Kakashi felt.

"What's happening?" Sakura asked quickly. "Is he okay?"

"He's okay," Kakashi reassured ineffectively; neither of them looked consoled, but the man didn't expect there was _anything_ he could say that would eliminate the unease it gave them to hear their teammate screaming in pain.

"What're they doing to him?" Sasuke asked, turning on Kakashi expectantly, like the man had some say in Naruto's fate just because he was an adult.

"They're sealing off his chakra," Kakashi supplied stiffly; his two young students stared back at him apprehensively. Few ninja could think of a worse fate for themselves.

The minutes in the hall passed slowly, but Naruto's suffering eventually ended, and it was only a short moment after that before Tsunade and Jiraiya slid the hospital door open to find the group of them waiting there.

"Oh good, you're all already here," Tsunade addressed, turning on the trio before her. "Kakashi, Sakura, Sasuke," Tsunade addressed quickly, "your next mission is S-ranked," she instructed formally. "Watch over Konoha's jinchuuriki while his chakra is sealed off. Don't let him take one step outside this village, and if anything seems unusual, bring him straight back to me."

oOoOo

Naruto wasn't sure how long he'd slept, but it couldn't have been more than half an hour – the drugs in his system felt as active as before he'd gone to sleep; and when he came to, it was Sasuke who broke the news to him that he'd be accompanied by his teammates for the next several days at least.

Over the next quarter of an hour, Naruto was discharged and sent home with Sasuke to escort him, walking several feet in front of Naruto who stared at the back of Sasuke's head, considering how stupid it was and wondering if Sasuke's sharingan could see or feel the weight of his unhappy gaze.

But Sasuke seemed none the wiser while he walked on in silence, stepping over a small puddle in the pavement with chakra coating the bottom of his foot.

But Naruto didn't have chakra at the moment, nor was he watching where he was going, and when his foot hit the surface of the puddle, it plunged right to the bottom of the shallow pothole, just deep enough to hook the tip of his foot on the uneven pavement before he could pull it out, sending him crashing to the street below with a thud.

If he had chakra, he would have had something to absorb the impact of his fall – but he had none, and instead tried to catch himself with outstretched hands, only managing to badly scrape up both the heels of his palms, his elbows, and his knees.

"God! You're such an _idiot!_ " Sasuke scolded while he grabbed Naruto by the arm, near his shoulder and pulled him to his feet, careful not to touch either of his bleeding, raspberry-covered elbows or his scraped up hands. "You don't have any chakra, stupid. You can't walk on water."

"I obviously know that, _okay?_ " Naruto snapped back unhappily, the sting he felt from his scrapes clear in his voice.

"I'm going to get in trouble because you can't walk a straight line without injuring yourself."

"I can do stuff," Naruto defended weakly, the drugs in his system dulling his wit. "And it's your fault I tripped anyway," he blamed aimlessly, "so maybe you _should_ get in trouble for once."

"How?" Sasuke challenged. "How was that anyone's fault but yours?"

Instead of clarifying, Naruto bit his tongue; explaining how he wasn't watching where he was going because he was so busy thinking about how annoyed he felt with Sasuke walking him home felt a little too complicated to get into, so he settled with an irritated noise in response.

But for all the aggravation Naruto felt with not having chakra, it seemed nothing compared to the irritation Sasuke had with Naruto for scraping himself up. "Come on, idiot," the brunette started while he led Naruto down the street toward his apartment building. "Let's get you cleaned up."

The first thing Sasuke asked for when they arrived was Naruto's first aid kit, which Naruto found peculiar at first.

"What for?" Naruto asked.

"To dress – your wounds." Sasuke said it slowly, but without any patience at all.

"It's just a couple scrapes," Naruto rationalized. "It'll go away in a few hours."

"No it won't, stupid," Sasuke explained, earning an unsure look from Naruto in response; with a resigned sigh, Sasuke pulled up his sleeve and peeled off part of a bandage near his shoulder. "Here's where you nicked me with a kunai _four days ago_. It still bleeds on and off."

Naruto inspected the wound with surprise and a fraction of guilt before Sasuke reapplied the bandage and pressed the tape back down to secure it.

"You're not the most observant person in the world so I'm not surprised I have to explain this to you, but when regular people get cut, they don't heal in just a few hours," Sasuke pressed on while he let himself into Naruto's bathroom to look for the kit himself.

"I'm – regular," Naruto claimed, feeling stung by the insinuation; Sasuke turned to look at him over his shoulder with an impatient, unimpressed look.

"I mean people who don't have a bijuu sealed inside of them," Sasuke reiterated before returning to his search. "And I'm willing to bet that Kyuubi's capacity to heal your wounds was sealed away with both your chakras."

"Oh," Naruto realized, thinking about everything Sasuke mentioned and absorbing the weight of it, "well, so – I don't actually –"

"You don't have a first aid kit," Sasuke assumed while he closed the mostly empty cabinet he searched through to turn and face his teammate who shrugged casually in response.

With an annoyed sigh, Sasuke summoned a clone to and sent it to his own home, which returned minutes later with a bundle of gauze, tape, and a bottle of antiseptic.

He acted aggravated with Naruto, but the way he carefully cleaned each of his newly acquired wounds before gently dressing them spoke another story, so Naruto sat quietly and let his surly teammate work.

"There," Sasuke mumbled as he taped off the last bit of gauze covering one of Naruto's hands. "How's that?"

Naruto looked down at Sasuke's work, feeling bulky from the bandages covering his hands, elbows, and knees. "Thanks, Sasuke."

"How do – how –" Sasuke struggled to find the words to the question he wanted to ask and Naruto stared back at him like he was speaking another language; Sasuke rarely kept reservations about _anyone's_ feelings so it was a sight to behold even if it was brief. "What does it feel like?"

"What? Not having chakra?" Naruto asked, earning a nod in acknowledgement from his brunette teammate. "It feels like – nothing," he admitted unhappily, a little uneasily, while he looked to the palms of his hands in discomfort. "I just feel nothing."

 **A/N:** More of the rookie 12 will be appearing in the coming chapters while Naruto adjusts to life without chakra. XD so fun to watch that kid suffer. Anyway, thanks so much for reading and please let me know what you think if you've got the time!


	11. Part Eleven

**Reality Bites**

 **Part Eleven**

Tsunade stood in the doorway of Jiraiya's study, watching the man flip through the many texts and scrolls laid out before him, scrutinizing every word he read.

"You know," he began thoughtfully, "there's always the possibility someone is manipulating the seal, and by sealing off Naruto's chakra, we're playing right into a trap."

"I've considered it," Tsunade reassured, earning an impatient glance from her old friend. "I dispatched half a dozen ANBU – and a bunch of his genin friends to keep him company. He's safer right now than any day he's lived with chakra so far. And–well he doesn't know it yet, but I've got him on lockdown."

Jiraiya responded with a dry laugh, gaze never straying the material before him. "I'm sure he's gonna be so happy to learn that."

"Yeah," Tsunade agreed. "I'd rather he try to kill the messenger instead."

"Callous," Jiraiya condemned, before adding in afterthought, "and honestly…pretty smart."

"They didn't name me hokage for nothing."

Jiriaiya didn't acknowledge her, or mention that the position was offered to him first; bringing it up usually didn't benefit him in any way, so instead, he posed, "Who's the most meticulous person you know?"

"Hatake Kakashi," Tsunade responded at first. "Or Nara Shikamaru," she added in an afterthought.

"Shikaku's kid?"

"That's the one."

Jiraiya laughed again, flipping through a large book of seals. "Bring them both. I need someone with a particular eye."

Kakashi was easy to find, but Shikamaru was tucked away in a corner of the village, well into a game of shogi with his chain-smoker of a teacher, which the younger complained was troublesome to pry him away from. But with or without complaint, no shinobi in the village dared snub the hokage, and within half an hour, both he and Kakashi were in Jiraiya's study, discussing in detail everything that's been happening with the seal over the last week.

Kakashi's first conclusion was the one Jiraiya came to earlier – that someone outside the village, or even more troublingly, inside the village, was manipulating the seal. Shikamaru was more quiet, debating internally his most logical guess.

"Do you have any regular documentation of the seal?" the young Nara asked.

Jiraiya pulled out a stack of tracings of the seal painted on a clear, plastic material, about as thick as stock paper but flimsier. "I've taken about two of these a month since I started training him."

Shikamaru held the stack in his hands, finding no distinction between any of them.

"The most recent one was from about a week and a half ago," Jiraiya mentioned, pointing toward the top sheet. "It couldn't hurt to get another tracing now."

Jiriaya placed a blank sheet on top of the stack in Shikamaru's hands, earning a great, tired sigh. "Fine."

"Just mold a little chakra and the tracer sheet will do the rest."

"It's no problem–running errands on my day off," the young Nara supplied cynically.

"Good sport," Jiraiya humored with a smack on the back in encouragement.

oOoOo

Naruto wouldn't call his apartment large – for him, it was always a functional size – but any time he had company, it seemed to highlight the fact that the area was big enough for him alone. Just minutes ago, his two teammates and the entirety of team eight had been crammed in here on some stupid assignment from Tsunade. But that moment was brief; the group of them cycled through keeping watch, posted at separate locations around Naruto's apartment complex. At the moment, only Sasuke and Kiba remained inside with him.

"So, you're all basically babysitting me in case someone who wants to kill me catches wind that I'm as threatening as a box of wet matches."

"Pretty much," Kiba agreed easily.

Naruto felt like complaining but hadn't the energy for it. The longer he went without his chakra, the worse he was feeling. It made him feel lightheaded – incomplete; and he didn't know if that feeling was real or psychological.

With a heavy hand, Naruto reached for the water bottle sitting at the edge of his nightstand, knocking it to the ground by accident instead.

"Wow," Kiba laughed, "you're even more uncoordinated than usual."

"Shut up, Kiba," the blonde bit back while he picked up the bottle from the ground and set it on his bedside table.

Naruto looked a mixture of stung and irritated – the same look he got any time someone questioned his capabilities – only now he didn't seem to have the self-confidence as he usually had to come to his own defense; maybe because this time he agreed with the person insulting him.

"To be fair, he wasn't discharged that long ago," Sasuke interjected, feeling uncomfortable with watching Naruto's self-esteem take a plunge. "There're still drugs in his system – he's been stumbling around like an idiot since we left the hospital. I mean, more than usual."

"No I haven't," Naruto complained unhappily.

"Yeah, you have," Sasuke reassured simply; Naruto seemed visibly upset with Sasuke, but that seemed leagues better to Sasuke than the self-doubt there earlier.

"It's okay, Naruto," Kiba reassured casually. "It'll fade over the next few hours." Few ninja were strangers to the effects of pain medication.

"No it won't!" Naruto complained. "You don't get it – _they took my chakra!_ "

Kiba and Sasuke only stared back soberly, because neither of them had anything to say that could make him feel better about it. There probably wasn't a ninja in the hidden villages that felt comfortable with the idea of losing his chakra.

"It's just temporary," Sasuke tried.

"What if it's not?" Naruto imagined. "What if Ero-sennin can't fix the seal?"

What if he was stuck in limbo for the rest of his life, reduced to a container of dangerous, untouchable chakra, as useless as he was fragile? The rest of what he feared was too personal to leave his mouth, the thought dying on his tongue.

"If he can't figure it out, the hokage will find someone who can," Sasuke supplied with confidence. "Think about it, you're a jinchuuriki–one of the village's greatest assets. The village leaders wouldn't want to seal off that potential forever."

"Yeah," Naruto acknowledged unsurely.

"You should just try not to think about it," Kiba offered, somewhat unhelpfully in Sasuke's opinion.

"What if we got out of here for a bit?" Sasuke posed instead.

"And go where?" Naruto shot back.

"Anywhere," Sasuke offered, "anywhere _in_ the village."

"Well, what about–?"

"And not the training grounds, okay?" Sasuke interjected, already sensing where Naruto was headed. "That's not in the village."

"Yeah, I'm not allowed to do anything anyway, so what's the point?" Naruto complained flatly.

A week ago, Sasuke wouldn't believe he was about to ask, but all he could think of was, "What about ramen?"

Naruto struggled with hiding his interest, unwilling to feel appeased over anything in his current predicament. "I guess," he agreed, "If you really need it that bad."

"It's for _you_ , idiot."

"Well, I'm not hungry," Naruto lied badly.

"We're going," Sasuke finalized. "Let's go."

But actually leaving was an ordeal in itself. When they tried to exit the building, a pair of ANBU blocked their path, advising them to stay put.

"We're not leaving the village," Sasuke insisted, earning no give.

"You're to stay put–Hokage's orders," one ANBU insisted from behind his mask.

"So now I'm on house arrest?" Naruto complained.

"Not for anything you've done," the other reinforced–a woman. "For your own safety."

"Well how long is that supposed to last?" the blonde pressed on.

"ANBU follow orders, we don't question them."

Naruto felt frustrated and cooped up–he couldn't really understand what about the village was so particularly dangerous for those without chakra; the villagers seemed to navigate it daily without chakra just fine. "Well can I at least talk to Tsunade-baa–?"

But before he could finish, he was cut off by a loud, low wail accompanied by a bright, blinding light; none of them could see a thing or hear over the noise, and what was only several short seconds felt like many long minutes deprived of two of their senses.

And when the light finally disappeared, Sasuke turned to find so had Naruto, along with the ANBU once standing in their path.

 **A/N:** Sorry for deleting and reposting a chapter. I've rewritten the second half so, although you might recognize a lot of the dialogue in the first part, this chapter does end differently than before. Sorry for that! I have a much better idea for the layout of the next few remaining chapters, so won't have to do that again. Anyway, thanks for reading! Review if you can. :]


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